According to NME, at the time of the first purge in December 2012, a YouTube spokesman told Billboard magazine that the removed views occurred when YouTube cleaned out all of the views that had once been uploaded to individual artists YouTube channels but had subsequently been replaced and were showing up on their VEVO channels instead.

However, the Lady Gaga view removal did not affect her YouTube channel with all 156 million views being removed from the star's VEVO channel.

Speaking at the time of the initial removal, a YouTube spokesperson stated the reasons behind the clear-up.

"This was not a bug or a security breach. This was an enforcement of our view count policy."

The move came after the site conducted an audit of its viewing figures and suspected view count building techniques from hackers, who were allegedly artificially boosting views on certain videos.

A source familiar with and close to Gaga shot down the notion that Gaga falsifies her social media stats.

“Lady Gaga is not involved with any fake YouTube views. She is not involved with any fake Twitter followers. She spends hours a day with her charity and performances. She is also recording a new album which people say may be one of the biggest albums in history. She has far more important things on her mind than manipulating YouTube and Twitter,” a source told Examiner.

VEVO is a music video website owned and operated by Sony Music Entertainment and UMG inside YouTube. Artists affected by the clear up besides Lady Gaga include Michael Jackson, Chris Brown and Beyonce©.