'Viralflation' is the new nightmare for content creators Is it far too easy to go viral?

The number of views has become an increasingly unreliable parameter for measuring the actual reach of online content. What was once considered the primary metric to determine the virality of a video or post — views, precisely — has now changed so much that it is difficult to determine with certainty how many people have actually come across a particular trend. This phenomenon has been defined as viralflation, a term born from the fusion of viral and inflation to indicate how the concept of virality has now become saturated. The term viral is used improperly, especially by influencer marketing agencies, for whom exaggerating the reach of content can be advantageous. But the responsibility doesn't lie solely with brands: the platforms themselves have significantly changed the way views are recorded, making the metric increasingly less relevant.

As early as 2016, Facebook had admitted to modifying the criteria for counting video views, registering a view every time a user watched a clip for more than three seconds. This change had the effect of artificially increasing the number of views, giving the impression that the content in the platform’s feed was much more popular. On TikTok, this mechanism is even more pronounced: a view is counted every time a video appears for a fraction of a second to the user. A method that drastically lowers the threshold for considering content actually viewed. Recently, YouTube also announced that it will adopt a similar system for its Shorts, stating that this choice was made to prevent creators from feeling penalized when comparing their video performances with Instagram or TikTok, where views tend to be significantly higher.

According to various analysts, large digital platforms have a strong economic incentive to maintain a high perception of audience engagement. Inflating the numbers can indeed make their advertising spaces more attractive to advertisers. But whereas a few years ago a video could be considered viral if it reached a million views in a short time, today this metric is based on much higher values, and the timeframe within which a satisfactory number of views must be achieved has shortened. This change is linked to the exponential increase in the number of people consuming content online: over the past ten years, the social media user base has expanded enormously, as has the amount of content consumed and published each day — with significant impacts on their moderation.

The offer has become broader and more fragmented, and users' attention is spread across a multiplicity of topics, making it increasingly difficult for a single video to stand out strongly amidst the general noise. Moreover, over the years, social media have shifted from being spaces for sharing one’s private life and opinions to environments where content is consumed passively. The platforms themselves have evolved into showcases for companies and influencers. However, for many years, the main premise of social media was to potentially allow anyone to “follow” the lives of people they didn’t see regularly. As technology journalist Charlie Warzel wrote in the Atlantic, today’s feeds «are so overwhelmed with ‘related content,’ recommended by algorithms, that one has to work hard to find their actual friends in this mess.»