If you’ve ever paid attention to the “Views” count on YouTube, particularly with videos that go viral (Ed. Note: I haven’t; who the hell does?), you might have noticed that it stops at 301 even when there is incredible disparity between the number of views listed and the number of comments on said video.
Well, there’s a reason for it, as the video above explains:
It comes down to a piece of code at YouTube. They decided they would need to verify the views on more popular videos to keep counterfeit views out of the official count. In the site’s infancy, they chose 300 views as the cut-off. When a video became more popular than 300 views, they’d begin a statistical verification process with batches of views cached at several servers.
But why does it usually freeze at 301 views, rather than 300, while that first batch of views from multiple servers is combined and verified? That comes down to a single piece of sloppy code: an equals sign where there didn’t need to be an equals sign.
OK, maybe this isn’t full-blown, mind-blowingly awesome, but it is pretty interesting. Deal.
Source: Gamma Squad
