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Why do YouTube views freeze at 301?

Numberphile · 301 views · 2012-06-22 · 9:48

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Overview

Numberphile visits YouTube to learn why view counts on new videos used to freeze at 301. It explains that YouTube holds counts while it verifies views aren't from bots or fakes.

On Hacker News

Linked whenever the 301 view freeze or view-count validation comes up, as the standard short explanation.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2012–2025

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Internet culture & memesRecreational & visual math
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301 viewsnumberphileview countingyoutube quirks

What people said

citricsquid · 2012-12 · Recommendation

They cache view counts heavily on highly viewed videos for validating views, here's a good video on why it happens (with information from Youtube -- the 301 refers to the first point at which video views stop incrementing in real time): [VIDEO]

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meinersbur · 2025-09 · Reference

From the GitHub issue it becomes clear that blocking happens by the EasyPrivacy blocklist. The blocked URL youtube.com/api/stats/atr is/can also be used for tracking users, this is why some are arguing that it legitimately on that blocklist. The tracking not malicious. YouTube has a legitimate interest to verify views, e.g. to recommend popular videos to others. If a view counter was increased by just invoking an API, view counts could be manipulated easily. Also see the video [1] from ... 13 years ago ... so it might be slighly outdated. Just slightly. [1] [VIDEO]

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cedilla · 2024-02 · Reference

You probably think of Numberphile explanation of why YouTube videos (used to) stay at 301 views for a while - leading to lots of confusion when the site showed 301 views with 5728 comments and 37592 likes. [VIDEO]

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Sources

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