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shagie 4 days ago

In looking at my filter log (I use AdGuard on a Mac), I do not see the API calls associated with YouTube getting blocked. In particular, the "cross device continuity" (Continue Watching) feature provides the data sufficient for monetization of the channel view.

When I looked at the same video while in incognito (and signed out), I could see some requests originating getting blocked that were not at all present during my watch of the video under premium.

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For YouTube, what is a "view?" If a chunk is downloaded, is that a view? If the next chunk is downloaded, is that two views? How do you verify that it's not the person who watched the first chunk?

YouTube doesn't appear to be counting views based on chunks downloaded as there are lots of ways to download chunks. Even doing things like scrubbing the video back 5 minutes would produce incorrect chunk download counts.

From this it appears that YouTube is counting views based on an API call from the page that identifies you (arguably through privacy issues) so that you downloading 1 chunk or 10 chunks only counts as one view. That API call appears to now be blocked.

Counting chunks downloaded would arguably be even less truthful or accurate than counting API calls.