Selenium Webdriver Youtube not count views

Question

I running tests on Youtube with Selenium Webdriver Firefox and Chrome and i observed that Youtube not count views from automation browsers. They surrely have a bot detection sistem and somehow detect users who use webdriver. In youtube live analytics I can see the country from which I accessing:

Also i tried without success this with Chrome

How they can detect someone using Webdriver and Chromedriver?

Thanks

Answer 1

There is no Selenium detection on Youtube. You just need IPs that are good for YT. Big companies like Google, Amazon etc blacklist most data center IPs. There's no way for them to know you're using Selenium unless they use a system like Distil networks which tests many elements to obtain your browser fingerprint using machine learning to ban you over time. YT does not run distil or anything similar.

Answer 2

I would suggest to try using IP Spoofing/proxing and change your IP address dynamically every time before launch your web driver. I guess they detect your machine's IP and doesn't increment the counter if trying to view same video multiple times, hope this can't be achieved even manually if you try. Google has million times better minds than us, they knew users would develop the scripts and increment the view counter and they can't pay for fake views as well, just my thoughts!

Answer 3

In youtube's TOS they state any automated system running against the site as a violation in section 4H.

https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms

I have a feeling they coded the detection of webdriver acting on youtube to prevent exactly this behavior from happening. Especially since having bots artificially increase views I am sure caused them a lot of trouble in the past.