Facebook. More money.

I don’t follow. How would FB profit from showing you an inflated number of plays? Are you paying them for plays?

When you sit in meetings and hear the social media and sales people spit their numbers, and it defies all forms reality...

Well, they look good to the company and the bosses eat up the voodoo science they are preaching.

I've yet to ever see true ROI or accurate numbers of any kind coming out of Facebook or Instagram for content or marketing campaigns. Instagram is mostly a bot problem. Facebook has loose impression and view numbers. YouTube hasn't ever been a red flag in my experience, but I've never been involved with any ad work there, just content.

Inflated efficacy of Facebook as a platform.

Many of the numbers I've seen are more in line with impressions. The app loading and being somewhere in a timeline dramatically inflates their numbers. In reality, I know a lot of people who see little to no gain from Facebook as a platform at this point. Especially for small business.