Tracking sudden view removal using YouTube’s own API
As someone who creates music, visuals, and short-form pieces across platforms, I’ve also been developing small tools to monitor how that work is received — especially on YouTube. But over the past couple weeks, I’ve noticed something deeply unusual:
YouTube is subtracting views from my videos almost immediately after they’re added.
And I’m not guessing.
I built a real-time tracker using the official YouTube Data API. The script logs how many views my videos receive, at what time, and what the net gain/loss looks like every few seconds. It’s a straightforward and transparent way to observe the system.
What I found was this:
- A view gets added to one of my videos
- Within seconds, that same view gets removed
- This pattern repeats over and over
- It affects multiple videos, not just one
- There’s no strike, no community guidelines issue, no copyright problem
Here are just two examples from my logs:
Each line in these screenshots shows that views were gained and then immediately reversed — repeatedly, across multiple uploads. Sometimes the same video loses a view and gains it back minutes later, or toggles up and down in rapid succession.
To be clear: this isn’t normal YouTube processing delay, which many creators are familiar with. This is a consistent suppression pattern that occurs live — logged via their own API — and I’ve been able to repeat it day after day.
What makes this worse is the complete lack of transparency.
There’s no notice, no explanation, and no way to appeal — and yet, something is clearly happening to how my content is allowed to grow or be seen.
On TikTok, I’ve even received comments from other creators saying things like “you should sue them” — not because of vanity metrics, but because this undermines trust in the platform and potentially limits opportunities that depend on algorithmic visibility.
As a creator, you expect your content to succeed or fail based on merit, not artificial throttling that happens invisibly in the background.
It’s difficult enough putting your work out there. Watching it quietly disappear is a whole different kind of discouragement.
More to come — but for now, I’m continuing to document what’s happening and share the data so others can compare with their own experience.
If you’re a creator and you’re seeing strange view behavior, you’re not alone.
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