When YouTube slashed views on its site back in December, celebrities paid the price. Since then Lady Gaga is down 156 million views on YouTube.
The views weren't fake, rather, Billboard confirmed that YouTube removed the views as part of a site clean up. While around 1.5 million of the views were deleted through a de-spamming which accounts for videos on auto-play and pop-ups, most of the lost views came from videos that were no longer active on celebrity channels after they transitioned to a new home on VEVO.
Since YouTube and VEVO are partner sites the old YouTube videos were no longer being used by the artists on their site.
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