The repeated playing of a video on the YouTube platform, often referred to as looping, involves setting a video to automatically replay after it finishes. This can be achieved through browser extensions, third-party websites, or YouTube’s built-in loop function on certain devices. For example, a viewer might loop a music video they enjoy, causing it to play continuously for an extended period.
The perceived benefit of looping lies in the potential for inflating the view count of a video. Historically, views were a significant metric for measuring a video’s popularity and influencing its ranking in search results and recommendations. Consequently, strategies aimed at artificially increasing views, such as looping, emerged. However, the effectiveness of this tactic has evolved over time due to changes in YouTube’s algorithms.