Fabricated viewership← Previous revisionRevision as of 02:15, 18 October 2026 Line 55: Line 55: A counter displayed on the main page of nazadocumentary.com purported to show the live view count of the documentary. On 5 October, the counter asserted the documentary had gained 20{{Spaces|2=nbsp}}million views, a highly improbable figure given that it had been released for less than a week.{{Cite web |last=Vivarelli |first=Nick |date=2026-10-05 |title=‘NAZA’ Rebuttal Doc Surfaces Online, Made by IDF Reserve Members |url=https://variety.com/2026/film/global/naza-rebuttal-doc-idf-reserve-members-1236898918/ |access-date=2026-10-16 |website=Variety |language=en-US}}{{Failed verification|date=October 2026}} By 8 October, the supposed viewership had surpassed 42 million, which was used by Ariel Averbuch to promote the film. A discrepancy was noted between the massive numbers shown on the documentary's website and reality, the YouTube video having just 30,000 views at the time. When ''[[The Guardian]]'' questioned Averbuch about where the 42 million figure came from, he claimed he did not know and referred the questions to his tech team. ''The Guardian'' speculated that the viewership could have been inflated by counting human or bot traffic to the website, rather than the amount of viewers who watched the documentary. A counter displayed on the main page of nazadocumentary.com purported to show the live view count of the documentary. On 5 October, the counter asserted the documentary had gained 20{{Spaces|2=nbsp}}million views, a highly improbable figure given that it had been released for less than a week.{{Cite web |last=Vivarelli |first=Nick |date=2026-10-05 |title=‘NAZA’ Rebuttal Doc Surfaces Online, Made by IDF Reserve Members |url=https://variety.com/2026/film/global/naza-rebuttal-doc-idf-reserve-members-1236898918/ |access-date=2026-10-16 |website=Variety |language=en-US}}{{Failed verification|date=October 2026}} By 8 October, the supposed viewership had surpassed 42 million, which was used by Ariel Averbuch to promote the film. A discrepancy was noted between the massive numbers shown on the documentary's website and reality, the YouTube video having just 30,000 views at the time. When ''[[The Guardian]]'' questioned Averbuch about where the 42 million figure came from, he claimed he did not know and referred the questions to his tech team. ''The Guardian'' speculated that the viewership could have been inflated by counting human or bot traffic to the website, rather than the amount of viewers who watched the documentary. On 14 October, the viewership grew to over 44 million views. [[Al Jazeera Media Network|Al Jazeera]] launched an investigation, noting the film had received less than 130,000 views on YouTube at the time, about 336 times less than the supposed amount. They also pointed out that the film's YouTube channel had fewer than 2,000 subscribers, and the film’s account on [[X (social network)|X]] only had 170 followers. The website’s source code revealed that the element displaying the counter was internally tagged as “visitors” despite being claimed to be “views”. However, it is also unlikely to record visitors as analytics from [[Semrush]] estimated the website received a total of about half a million visits by 8 October. Viewing data was collected in a "watch-tracker" file after 25 seconds of watchtime, however it is unknown if the counter uses this information, as its number is generated from the site's server, making the calculation method invisible. It was found that upon entering the website, the counter would start at 97% of its total value and increase over a three second interval, simulating what appeared to be a live counter.{{Cite web |last=Alzanin |first=Mohamed |title=Al Jazeera probe exposes fake viewing numbers for Israeli counter-film |url=https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/15/al-jazeera-probe-exposes-fake-viewing-numbers-for-israeli-counter-film |access-date=2026-10-16 |website=Al Jazeera |language=en}} On 14 October, the viewership grew to over 44 million views. [[Al Jazeera Media Network|Al Jazeera]] launched an investigation, noting the film had received less than 130,000 views on YouTube at the time, about 336 times less than the supposed amount. They also pointed out that the film's YouTube channel had fewer than 2,000 subscribers, and the film’s account on [[X (social network)|X]] only had 170 followers. The website’s source code revealed that the element displaying the counter was internally tagged as “visitors” despite being claimed to be “views”. However, it is also unlikely to record visitors as analytics from [[Semrush]] estimated the website received a total of about half a million visits by 8 October. Viewing data was collected in a "watch-tracker" file after 25 seconds of watchtime, however it is unknown if the counter uses this information as its number is generated from the site's server, making the calculation method invisible. It was found that upon entering the website, the counter would start at 97% of its total value and increase over a three second interval, simulating what appeared to be a live counter.{{Cite web |last=Alzanin |first=Mohamed |title=Al Jazeera probe exposes fake viewing numbers for Israeli counter-film |url=https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/15/al-jazeera-probe-exposes-fake-viewing-numbers-for-israeli-counter-film |access-date=2026-10-16 |website=Al Jazeera |language=en}} == References == == References ==