“Vincere aut Mori”, the lie of the counters

Extreme practices of high-risk sports have now reached their limits, especially when practitioners have outgrown their own. We can only deplore the too many deaths over the last two years of these athletes pushed to excess by an economic model that has transformed them into gladiators of modern times: “Vincere aut Mori” (win or die), They switched from circus act to arena show.

This is why the artistic dimension must take precedence over the inflation of risks in videos.

So it seems opportune to put aside raw videos (video file directly broadcast without editing) and to concentrate on real videos that carry aesthetic value and which offer an emotion to the spectator other than thrills.

Unfortunately this is not the message transmitted by the manufacturer of action cameras and still less by an “energizing” drink brand that not only based its communication on this kind of activity, but also created a second structure to house its image production and broadcasting activities.

This situation has been greatly exacerbated by facebook and its desire to develop video hosting (since 2014).

To give the feeling that the videos are more watched on this platform than the others (and probably following the monetization of the promotion), this company has set up a count of the video views that it hosts as whimsical as doubtful.

So the number of views displayed to the public is virtually the number of proposed viewing of the video. So much so that the ratio of the number of views indicated / the number of real views is at least 20, goes up very quickly to 50 and can go well beyond with important share trees.

A video announced at 2M views on facebook is most likely at 40 K true views

In other words, a video announced at 2M views on facebook is most likely at 40 K true views (being optimistic). It’s why you can see videos shared several times on the same thread at a few minutes of interval to increase these statistics (since these are the proposal that are counted). The same is true for companies that cyclically post the same videos on their page (like a drink brand).

By distorting the popularity of the videos to the best organized or large budgets “distribution networks”, and this is where it becomes problematic, it has led some extreme sportsmen to an illusory and Mortal “number of views” challenge that they cant win. Because they dont realize this distortion of reality, these sportsmen enter a spiral of risk-taking that ends by death, in order to be noticed by sponsors.

As Facebook explains, the simple fact of having the preview in your news feed is considered as a view without even clicking on it!

The remedy is simple: you have to communicate this distortion of the statistics to the sportsmen, the journalists, the advertisers and the sponsors to put an end to this practice which finally is deadly. By showing that you consider the facebook view counters as irrelevant, you will bring this company to give less whimsical counters, save lives and promote a fairer promotion of deserving sportsmen.

For those who broadcast videos, it’s easy, prioritize platforms that have set up honest, controllable, and credible counts. Obviously it is less flattering 40 K views than 2M views, but it is more satisfactory when we know them real.

To conclude I will say: lose “views” to save “lives”.

Jan Thinoks