Views are the most visible metric on the internet. You can see, in more or less real time, how many views something got on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and most other video platforms. X tracks views for every single thing you post, as does Threads. A view is the universal currency of success — more views, more fun.
Technology
On TikTok, YouTube, X, and everywhere, ‘views’ are lies
But it’s all nonsense. Views are nothing. Views are lies.
You may not need me to remind you of this. We’ve known for years that view counts are meaningless, to the point that Facebook wound up getting sued for aggressively inflating view counts in an effort to convince people to make Facebook videos. Others have written thoughtfully about how stupid view counts are. But we still talk about view counts, view counts are still everywhere, so let’s talk once again about view counts.
A “view,” in reality, is not a universal metric. It’s not really anything. It is whatever a platform wants it to be, which usually has no actual correlation to whether someone actually encountered and experienced a piece of content. You can just make the views whatever you want! And if you don’t like the way the numbers look, make views something else!
Let’s just run through a few of these, shall we? The simplest ones to understand are the social platforms: Instagram, TikTok, and (as of last week) YouTube Shorts all count a view the second a video starts playing. This is objectively absurd. Every time you scroll, even if you immediately jump to the next video, the platform logs that you watched the video the same as if you’d seen the whole thing. That’s like saying, if you’re in a Best Buy and you walk past a TV playing Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, you’ve now technically seen Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Congratulations, you’re a pirate.
In a way, though, that ridiculously easy bar to clear is actually a more accurate measure than some others. On Facebook, for instance, a view is defined as “the number of times a reel or video was played, plus the number of times photos or text were on screen.” Since videos autoplay all over the platform, those two metrics are effectively the same thing. The metric is so unhelpful that Facebook actually offers creators two other numbers: three-second video views, also known as “people who pressed play,” and one-minute video views, which is at least slightly closer to “people who actually watched this thing.” Those numbers aren’t public, though, because they’d be much lower.
The view has been the universal Meta metric since last fall, when Facebook combined all its other performance and engagement metrics into just one. For photos, text posts, and Stories, the company wrote in a blog post, “Views are calculated as the number of times they appear on a person’s screen, including repeat views.” That used to be a different metric — your content being presented to someone was known as an “impression,” but they had to interact with it in some way before it became a view. Now it’s just views.
The idea that everything in your feed counts as a view is pernicious, and it’s everywhere
The idea that everything in your feed counts as a view is pernicious, and it’s everywhere. As you scroll on X, every single post on your feed gets a view as it flows up and off your screen. Posts that appear in search results, on someone’s profile page — anything that shows up on the page appears to be considered “viewed.” X’s documentation on post views is sketchy and vague, but its video rules are pretty straightforward: if the video was playing for at least two seconds, and half of the player was in view on your screen, then that counts as a view. All these videos play automatically, so we’re back to the same thing: if it loaded, you viewed it.
The reason so many companies have embraced such stupid metrics is both simple and self-reinforcing. If you’re the platform that counts views in a way that actually reflects reality, your numbers will be lower. Creators might see that, decide your platform doesn’t have the juice, and start posting somewhere they’ll ostensibly get more eyeballs. Advertisers might worry that they’ll be broadcasting to dead air. On the social web, momentum is everything, and sometimes you have to lie about the size of your party to get the first people in the door.
In this way of defining views, the platforms also have all the control. Think about it: you don’t press play to get the video going, and you don’t have to stick around for it to count. Whatever the platform wants to get views, gets views. There is no step two, no intermediary, no actual matching of content and audience. There are just… views.
Even the Hollywood types are being pulled into the vortex of made-up view counts. Netflix once clocked a view only after you’d completed 70 percent of something — which, I should point out, is the closest thing to actually tracking whether you’ve watched something of any metric we’ve discussed so far. Now, it only takes two minutes for Netflix to decide you’ve watched something. Netflix actually picked two minutes because it’s “long enough to indicate the choice was intentional.” First of all, no it’s not. Second, Netflix knows how much you actually watched! It just wants the numbers to be higher — around 35 percent higher than under the previous metric, Netflix admitted.
Ironically, Netflix is one of the few streamers that explains how it calculates views at all; most keep their metrics quiet, so they can say things like “it was a huge hit!” without having to provide any actual information. Even YouTube is cagey about its calculations: it’s generally accepted wisdom that you have to watch 30 seconds of a standard YouTube video for it to count as a view, but if that’s official policy I sure can’t find it anywhere.
It is incredibly obvious, by the way, that all the companies peddling these fake numbers know what they’re doing. If they thought public-facing view counts were legit, they’d offer those same numbers to creators and advertisers. Creators typically get to see non-public data like watch time and actual interactions, but even they are consistently being given less and less to work with. Advertisers, though, have the run of the place: YouTube and other platforms still track impressions separately from views, but only for ads. (YouTube may count every Shorts scroll as a view publicly, but it only pays creators for what it calls “Engaged views.”) Many platforms even tell advertisers how many people watched a quarter, half, three-quarters, or all of a video. The platforms themselves are collecting all this data and more, of course, in an effort to better tune the algorithm. They know the answers! But they’ll never show them to you.
We’ve been doing this whole internet thing for a while now, and it’s pretty clear that just about all the metrics are bad. They’ve turned the internet into a game to be won, a system to be gamed, a race to the biggest numbers even when the numbers don’t mean anything. Maybe we’d all be better off without the numbers, but they’re not going anywhere. So all we can do is remember: “views” are not views. Views are lies.
I’ve recommended several OLED gaming monitors to readers over the years, and I’ve finally taken my own advice to buy one. Alienware’s new 27-inch 1440p QD-OLED has all the features that I want and a low $350 price that was too tempting to ignore.
The AW2726DM model has five things that make it stand out for the price: a 1440p QD-OLED screen with lush contrast, a fast 240Hz refresh rate, a semi-glossy screen coating to enhance details, a low-profile design without flashy RGB LEDs, and a great warranty (three years with coverage for burn-in).
I’ve been using Alienware’s new monitor for a couple days, and I’ve already spent hours with it playing Marathon. It was my first opportunity to see Bungie’s new first-person extraction shooter in its full HDR glory, and I can never go back. Switching on HDR wasn’t automatic, though it already looked so much better than my IPS panel without being activated.
Enabling it transformed how Marathon looked for the better, but made everything else about the OS look pretty washed-out. It’s a Windows issue, not an Alienware issue. It’s easy to enable HDR every time I launch a game and disable it afterward with the Windows + Alt + B keyboard shortcut, but unfortunately triggers HDR for all connected displays. This includes my IPS monitor that imbues everything with a terrible gray hue when HDR is on. So, using the system settings is the best way to adjust HDR for just the QD-OLED.
I landed on this QD-OLED after having spent a ton of time researching pricier models. The unanimous takeaway from reviewers was that LG’s Tandem RGB WOLED panels are some of the brightest out there, but also tend to exhibit lousy gray uniformity in dark scenes. QD-OLED monitors, on the other hand, offer slightly better contrast than WOLED and don’t suffer from those same uniformity issues. However, blacks sometimes appear as dark purple in bright rooms on QD-OLED panels, meaning they’re ideal for rooms that don’t have a bunch of light bouncing around.
There’s no perfect choice, and honestly I got tired of doing research, so I jumped in with the cheapest OLED. I’m glad that I did. Shopping for an OLED gaming monitor can be hard, but it can also be this easy. AOC makes a model that’s discounted to $339.99 at the time of publishing, and its specs are comparable.
As expected, the AW2726DM isn’t a cutting-edge monitor. Its QD-OLED panel isn’t as fast or as bright as some other pricier options, and it doesn’t have USB ports for connecting accessories. Considering its low price, it’s easy for me to overlook those omissions. I’d have a much harder time accepting them in a pricier display.
The fact that I mostly use my computer for text-based work at The Verge is what prevented me from upgrading to an OLED monitor. My 1440p IPS monitor is bright, it’s good at showing text clearly, and it has a fast refresh rate for gaming. Alienware’s QD-OLED is less bright, and some might be bothered by how text looks (I have to really squint to see the slight fringing from this QD-OLED’s subpixel layout). But I have a life outside of work, which includes playing a lot of PC games. That’s the slice of myself I bought this monitor for, and I’m so happy I did.
Photography by Cameron Faulkner / The Verge
Technology
Michael and Susan Dell surpass $1 billion in donations backing AI-driven hospital project
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Billionaire Michael Dell and his wife, Susan Dell, have become the first donors to give more than $1 billion to the University of Texas at Austin, funding a massive new medical research campus and hospital system powered by artificial intelligence.
The couple’s latest investment includes a $750 million gift to help build the UT Dell Medical Center, a planned “AI-native” hospital expected to open in 2030 as part of a more than 300-acre advanced research campus.
University officials said the project will integrate research, clinical care and advanced computing to improve early disease detection, personalize treatment and expand access to care in the rapidly growing Austin region.
The Dells’ support builds on decades of contributions to UT, including funding for its medical school, scholarships and research programs.
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Michael Dell and Susan Dell attend the Breakthrough Prize ceremony as they become the first to donate more than $1 billion to the University of Texas at Austin. ( Craig T Fruchtman/WireImage)
“By bringing together medicine, science and computing in one campus designed for the AI era, UT can create more opportunity, deliver better outcomes, and build a stronger future for communities across Texas and beyond,” Michael Dell and Susan Dell said.
The gift ranks among the largest in the history of higher education, alongside major contributions like Phil Knight’s $2 billion pledge to Oregon Health & Science University and Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins University.
The new UT Dell Medical Center will be developed in collaboration with MD Anderson Cancer Center, integrating cancer care into a system designed to connect prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
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The University of Texas at Austin campus at sunset. (iStock)
“We will deliver better outcomes for patients by providing research-driven cancer care that is precise, compassionate and hope-filled,” Peter WT Pisters, president of UT MD Anderson, said.
Officials said the facility will be built from the ground up to incorporate AI, rather than retrofitting older infrastructure — an approach they say could transform how hospitals operate.
Independent experts have cautioned that AI in health care can introduce risks if not carefully validated. A widely cited study published in the journal Science by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago found that a commonly used healthcare algorithm underestimated the needs of Black patients due to biased training data, highlighting broader concerns about equity in AI-driven systems.
The project also includes funding for undergraduate scholarships, student housing and the Texas Advanced Computing Center, where officials are developing one of the nation’s most powerful academic supercomputers.
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Artificial intelligence technology is expected to play a key role in diagnosis and patient care at the planned UT Dell Medical Center. (iStock)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the investment will help position the state as a national leader in healthcare innovation.
“Texas already dominates in technology, energy and business, and now we will further cement our leadership in health care innovation as well,” Abbott said.
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The university said it plans to break ground on the medical center later this year and has launched a broader campaign to raise $10 billion over the next decade.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
SpaceX and Cursor are now working closely together to create the world’s best coding and knowledge work AI.
The combination of Cursor’s leading product and distribution to expert software engineers with SpaceX’s million H100 equivalent Colossus training supercomputer will allow us to build the world’s most useful models.
Cursor has also given SpaceX the right to acquire Cursor later this year for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for our work together.
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