YouTube has warned users who buy “fake views” for their videos to make them appear more popular that they will be clamping down on the practice and may delete offending clips.

YouTube has warned users who buy “fake views” for their videos to make them appear more popular that they will be clamping down on the practice.

Google, which owns the video sharing site, has told users that it has begun auditing video views and will consider reducing the number if anything suspicious is detected, or even deleting the video altogether.YouTube's terms and conditions forbid "purchasing views".

In a blog post last night Google software engineer Philipp Pfeiffenberger said: “YouTube isn’t just a place for videos, it’s a place for meaningful human interaction.

Whether it’s views, likes, or comments, these interactions both represent and inform how creators connect with their audience. That’s why we take the accuracy of these interactions very seriously.

“When some bad actors try to game the system by artificially inflating view counts, they’re not just misleading fans about the popularity of a video, they’re undermining one of YouTube’s most important and unique qualities.

“As part of our long-standing effort to keep YouTube authentic and full of meaningful interactions, we’ve begun periodically auditing the views a video has received.

While in the past we would scan views for spam immediately after they occurred, starting today we will periodically validate the video’s view count, removing fraudulent views as new evidence comes to light.”