> Google has never announced how they count views. They have announced that recommended videos are suggested based on the % of videos watched. I would think some of that same technology is being used in the view count.
What do you mean? Surely there is no magical technology or algorithms behind view count? "If a unique user watches a video increment the counter by 1" why would they need anything more complex than this?
I know there is a lot of abuse protection but I'm not sure how this fits in with my assertion that 1 click = 1 view. There was a bug a few months back with Youtube that didn't apply anti-abuse checking to Mobile views (viewing a video from a mobile device) and a group of blackhat people abused this and sold views: they would view a video 1,000,000 times as if it was being viewed from a mobile device and Youtube would count 1,000,000 views, even if it was all from the same IP.
I'm not sure how it's debatable that if 800 people click on a Youtube video link then 800 views will be counted, what reason would they have for not counting 800 views if 800 people clicked on it?