YouTube is changing how it counts views: Will it affect creators’ earnings?

YouTube has announced major plans to change its view count. Starting August 24, a view will be counted as a video starts playing or a user enters a live broadcast.

Previously, a view required watching at least 30 seconds of video. On Monday, YouTube officially announced on X, stating, “Starting 8/24, views will count the moment a video begins to play (w/ no minimum watch time) across all formats (VOD, Shorts, & Live). We’re standardizing views to reflect creators’ true exposure across YouTube, making it easier to show their value to brand partners.”

“This update won't impact creator earnings or YPP eligibility,” the statement reads.

This latest shake-up matches the approach YouTube applied to Shorts a year ago, as well as the standard used by competitors like Instagram and TikTok. The company made the change to simplify metrics across formats and help creators better understand their true audience exposure.

Creators will still have access to the original view metric via YouTube Analytics to analyze how many people continued watching past the initial moments. The view-count change will not affect creators’ earnings or eligibility for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP).

For instance, the earnings will be based on “Engaged Shorts views” and “Engaged Watch Hours.” Speaking about the YPP entry requirements, "Qualified Shorts views" and “Qualified watch hours” now replace “valid public Shorts views” and “valid public watch hours” respectively.

New creators seeking to join YouTube’s main ad-revenue program will face a higher eligibility threshold. For instance, the watch hours must be 8,000 qualified ones in the previous 12 months up from 4,000. Shorts views should be 20 million in the previous 90 days, up from 10 million. The new monetization threshold will start from February 1, 2027.

How are users responding?

The announcement sparked backlash from users. One user commented, “This undermines the credibility of your platform. You're the only platform that sets a higher bar to count a view online. Now you will be just like the rest of them.”

Another wrote, “This rewards AI slop creators. Sometimes it takes a few seconds for me to realize that I just clicked on a worthless AI generated video before closing it. Now, in addition to the annoyance of wasting my time, I’ll have the regret of having given them a view. Wonderful.”

“They are going to ruin YouTube like they did Twitter lmao. Just fake content and impression farming,” Third one lamented.