A user below summarized the issue the way I understand it:
> what happens is that views under 3 seconds aren't counted towards the average. So if you have 999 999 views of <1 second each and 1 view of 3 seconds, the reported average is 3 seconds / 1 view = average view time of 3 seconds, while the true average is something like 500 000 seconds / 1 000 000 views.
This is massive fraud, especially if you're shouting from the rooftops "Look at how much more attention people are paying to your videos in our platform!".
> what happens is that views under 3 seconds aren't counted towards the average. So if you have 999 999 views of <1 second each and 1 view of 3 seconds, the reported average is 3 seconds / 1 view = average view time of 3 seconds, while the true average is something like 500 000 seconds / 1 000 000 views.
This is massive fraud, especially if you're shouting from the rooftops "Look at how much more attention people are paying to your videos in our platform!".