
Show HN: YouTube Decade – The most-viewed videos posted 10 years ago - bennettfeely
https://youtubedecade.netlify.com/
======
earthscienceman
Woah. Great idea, so many interesting things to explore. I'm surprised there's
no comment yet about the video titled "The most dangerous Barack Obama video
ever!!!". It's such an obvious precursor for what the internet would be come.
I was genuinely shocked that it had 10,000,000+ views.

Preserved in a screenshot:

[https://i.imgur.com/mnerRgk.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/mnerRgk.jpg)

~~~
codetrotter
Also in that screenshot is a video from the UKF Dubstep channel.

23.4M views. Is that the number of views now or the number of views ten years
ago?

~~~
jonny_eh
Probably now, I doubt they could get that kind of historical data.

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bartread
Unreal. Front page: 6.9M people[1] watched a video of a small dog trying to
mate with a cat. The cat wasn't interested but showed surprising forbearance.

 _[1] OK, yes, I know, it 's 6.9M views, and probably some people watched it
multiple, so it's probably 2 - 3M people, but that's still a lot of people
watching a dog mating with a cat._

~~~
have_faith
I thought YT counted multiple viewings from the same person as a single view.
Or it would be too easy to game. I at least imagine there would be a time
cutoff before it considered counting a new view from the same person.

~~~
szatkus
There are videos with billions of views, I doubt that much fraction of the
planet saw them.

I imagine it would horrible performance-wise. You would need to store list of
browser fingerprints and check it on every view.

~~~
agumonkey
I think youtube does a bit of checking on views. The view counter is not real,
IIRC the delay is due to asynchronous processing, youtube has time to do stuff
in some cases. That's why a lot of videos are stuck at 320 views, that's the
supposed limit above which the counting goes async and you get lots of vid
with false views.

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sebst
Spider cat. I watched the Simpson movie with my first girl friend. She hated
it, I loved it. Heck, am I getting old...

~~~
jaynetics
Same for me!

First girlfriend. Opposite opinions of the movie.

We broke up soon after.

------
PBnFlash
This is neat, I tried to make a video series a while ago where I compared and
contrasted what was in the front page of YouTube 10 years ago. This would have
been super helpful for that. But I was shocked with how much of the stuff from
back then on that site is just gone.

~~~
tpetry
What is happening at youtube? Do they delete old content? Only storing a
single copy for old content and the disks are dying?

~~~
pjc50
Copyright takedowns, probably.

~~~
mcny
I made a video using YouTube's own Audio tracks thing and put a classical
piano tuner from its library. It still got a copy right claim and someone
makes money every view.

How? The track is from YouTube. It was written more than two hundred years
ago. In any case, a claim against YouTube's own tracks should be auto rejected
and the violater banned. Instead...

Why?

~~~
PeterisP
Performance copyright applies to classical music as much as for everything
else. You're free to play, record and distribute copies of Beethoven's
Symphony No. 5 as the copyright to the composition has expired, but you're not
free to redistribute recordings of someone else performing Beethoven's
Symphony No. 5 without the explicit permission from the author(s) of that
performance.

~~~
mcny
Sorry but that makes no sense to me. I didn't upload a video with a sound
track. I added the sound track with YouTube's tool.

The track I used is from YouTube's library. YouTube knows it because I used
it. There should be no confusion about who the performer is and nobody should
be able to claim the video.

~~~
thrownblown
have you rebutted the claim? and if so what was the response?

also we have a whole other thread on the HN front page about this RN

------
gitgud
Nice work! Would be great if you could navigate one day forward and backward.

~~~
johnpowell
[https://youtubedecade.netlify.com/data/2019_8_24.json](https://youtubedecade.netlify.com/data/2019_8_24.json)

[https://youtubedecade.netlify.com/data/2019_8_26.json](https://youtubedecade.netlify.com/data/2019_8_26.json)

~~~
gitgud
This is why it's called _Hacker News_ I suppose :)

------
robotmlg
Similarly, [https://favrd.it](https://favrd.it) has been posting the top
tweets of 2009 (as compiled by Favrd, RIP)

------
disillusioned
This just makes me deeply miss YouTube Time Machine.

------
mgalgs
Kudos to the creator for the responsible advertising strategy. The "hey --
you're using an ad blocker" message was thoughtful and non-guilt-tripping. Ads
are clearly delineated as such, and the actual ads aren't spammy (carbon).
Online advertising needs an overhaul and this is a step in the right
direction.

------
MattConfluence
There was a fun similar thing for Reddit on
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TenYearsAgoOnReddit/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TenYearsAgoOnReddit/)
(and
[https://www.reddit.com/r/FiveYearsAgoOnReddit/](https://www.reddit.com/r/FiveYearsAgoOnReddit/)),
sadly it stopped posting ~9 months ago.

Is it possible to use the search API to create something like this for HN?

~~~
insin
Create a bookmarklet of this:

    
    
        let d = new Date()
        d.setFullYear(d.getFullYear() - 10)
        location.href = `https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=${d.getFullYear()}-${d.getMonth() + 1}-${d.getDate()}`

~~~
systemtest
This will break on February 29 :)

~~~
shadowoflight
Unless it's ten years past a leap year!

~~~
esrauch
If it's Feb 29 then you know for sure it isn't 10 years past a leap year,
since they are every four years.

~~~
shadowoflight
Ah, yes, I am an idiot. Oops.

------
flamtap
The old-school YouTube iOS icon for the favicon is a great touch!

