I'd guess it skips running the JavaScript that reports to the Analytics backend...
I ended up trying to look it up and found this:
> Available options: [...] mark_watched: Mark videos watched (even with --simulate). Only for YouTube
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/c8680b65f79cfeb23b342b...
So I'm guessing without that, it doesn't, so would have to add the flag for it to try to count it as a view.
alt Hacker News
I ended up trying to look it up and found this:
> Available options: [...] mark_watched: Mark videos watched (even with --simulate). Only for YouTube
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/c8680b65f79cfeb23b342b...
So I'm guessing without that, it doesn't, so would have to add the flag for it to try to count it as a view.