3.4M video views, no reactions
Hello HN sleuths. Here's a link to the trailer for the upcoming Star Trek: Picard https://youtu.be/t7scVHakTRk
It shows 3.4 million views, and only few likes/dislikes and only 9 comments. How's this possible? Could someone manipulate views? Could something like this be organic results? Just wondering...
To me that's a sign the video got embedded somewhere else, e.g. twitter. On twitter the video would play but have no reaction/comment features.
For me it shows "Video unavailable The uploader has not made this video available in your country." and "Comments are turned off"
My guess is that it was used as a paid ad in other YouTube videos. Channels will often do that quickly accumulate view count, which would help in organic rankings as well. In this case, it doesn't seem to have worked very well. Maybe it was unlisted at first and only recently made public?
Could it be that the video is embedded somewhere else, without the YouTube interface with its buttons and comments, hence explaining why people don't add their reaction?
Does a view of a video when embedded counts the same as a view directly on YouTube?