Did YouTube Lower the SNSD/Girls’ Generation “Gee” Music Video from 150m views to 800k? NO. Here’s Why.

Posted on November 9, 2015 by thehomeland

Today there has been uproar from Sones, (fans of Girls’ Generation, or SNSD for short), especially on twitter using the hashtag #JusticeforGEE, from the idea that YouTube has somehow reduced the number of views that SNSD’s music video “Gee” down to about 800,000 views, when previously it was up to about 150,000,000.

This is not true.

But here’s the real story we do know so far:

There are two official posts of SNSD’s Gee video, which were posted by SM (SNSD’s publisher) on different official YouTube channels. The video with the 150 million hits was taken down by YouTube based on an unspecified copyright claim, and the one with 800 thousand views is still up. The view count on the 800k video stayed the same.

Link to the 150m-view Gee MV: here *
Link to the 800k-view Gee MV: here
* this address is what the Wikipedia entry for Gee links to as the official video.

SM Entertainment has at least 2 YouTube channels: sment and SMTOWN, both of which have official SNSD videos on them. Both of them have/had Gee music videos, but only one of them was taken down.

The removal is not permanent, it is only a copyright claim. I personally have had copyright claims against my own videos being taken offline temporarily while the content issue was discussed, and when it was resolved as not being my fault, the video was restored with the same number of views still intact. Let’s just wait to see what happens.

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