Creators have reported view declines on YouTube since mid-August.
YouTube’s official Liaison account says the change wasn’t on YouTube’s aspect and factors to a extensively shared clarification on X: an ad-blocking checklist replace that interferes with how views are logged.
What YouTube Has Stated
Responding to creators, YouTube’s Creator Liaison wrote:
“The change wasn’t on YouTube’s aspect… that is the commonest clarification I’ve personally seen.”
The submit hyperlinks to an evaluation that attributes the decline to the EasyPrivacy replace. YouTube hasn’t introduced any separate product or coverage modifications associated to view counting.
The change wasn’t on YouTube’s aspect. A bunch of non-YouTube folks have seemed into it and that is the commonest clarification I’ve personally seen: https://t.co/Da7C4z6Xz5
— YouTube Liaison (@YouTubeInsider) October 4, 2025
What Modified
Tech creator ThioJoe highlighted an EasyPrivacy replace that added a rule blocking the request youtube.com/api/stats/atr.
The thread argues that blocking this request could forestall the participant from sending the info YouTube makes use of to log a view.
TL;DR: The YouTube view drops are due to the EasyPrivacy checklist including the URL “youtube[.]com/api/stats/atr” on August eleventh. Inflicting Adblockers to dam view counting telemetry.
The blocked merged into UbO Lite on August twelfth, pushed to chrome webstore by subsequent day.
It… https://t.co/S1zNzr7EEq
— ThioJoe (@thiojoe) September 16, 2025
The EasyPrivacy commit reveals the single-line addition in easyprivacy_specific.txt for ||youtube.com/api/stats/atr.
EasyPrivacy is a community-maintained filter checklist developed by the EasyList challenge. Advert blockers use these lists to find out which community requests to dam. EasyPrivacy particularly targets monitoring requests like analytics and behavioral beacons to assist cut back knowledge assortment.
A number of standard advert blockers, akin to uBlock Origin Lite, embody EasyPrivacy as a part of their default or beneficial checklist of filters.
Why This Impacts YouTube Views
When a YouTube video performs, the participant sends small background requests to log what occurred. Consider them as receipts that say a playback began or progressed.
The thread on the middle of this dialogue factors to a kind of requests, …/api/stats/atr, as being blocked by the EasyPrivacy change.
If that request is blocked, a playback will not be recorded as a view in analytics though the video nonetheless loaded for the viewer.
What Creators Reported
Posts discussing the difficulty point out that the timing of the drops coincides with the EasyPrivacy change, and the rule was integrated into uBlock Origin Lite shortly afterward, in response to posts in the identical thread.
These posts additionally be aware that the affect is most noticeable on desktop, the place browser extensions are extra widespread, whereas cell app viewing appears much less affected. Some creators have talked about that their RPM remained comparatively secure regardless of a lower in uncooked views, and their like-to-view ratios elevated as a result of likes nonetheless rely even when some views don’t.
These insights come from public threads and aren’t official platform-wide metrics from YouTube.
Why This Issues
In the event you observed unexplained drops beginning mid-August, a few of the decline is perhaps on account of ad-blocked periods quite than a change in viewers curiosity or YouTube insurance policies.
For reporting and planning, examine traits on desktop and cell, assessment income and watch-time alongside view counts, and be aware the affected interval for groups and shoppers.
The important thing takeaway is that updates to third-party filter lists can affect your analytics knowledge even when the platform itself stays unchanged.
Featured Picture: miss.cabul/Shutterstock
