A Guardian article from two years ago suggests that lots of the "views" that YouTube videos receive may not be from real (or at least human) eyes. The article tells us that Nearly 25% of 'people' viewing online video ads are robots used by fraudsters, and explains:
Bot fraudsters infect unsuspecting computer users with malware - malicious software. Sophisticated botnets mimic the behaviour of online consumers, pausing at ads, watching videos, switching websites and even putting items in shopping carts. This fake traffic is often bought by publishers who are unaware their audience is fake.I'm not really sure just what this means, but it seems to suggest that bots are "watching" YouTube videos instead of me, creating bogus feedback on the actual number of views those videos receive. If all that this means is that the viewing statistics are wrong, and advertisers are paying for views that aren't really there, I'm quite comfortable with this being someone else's problem. But perhaps this is the start of a trend which is ushering in a new era when autonomous computers create YouTube videos algorithmically designed to meet the algorithmically defined tastes of bots who'll watch them. That's a more disturbing thought, but I guess that at least it would leave "real" people alone to do something else like read books.