Disaster Discord “accidentally” viewbots YouTube video to 500+ million views - Discord “accidentally” viewbotted a YouTube video to 500+ million views and counting, and in the process, seemingly also broke part of YouTube itself. (The video is at 628M+ views)

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On April Fool’s Day 2024, Discord announced a new addition to its app, loot boxes. A completely free feature for users to test out on the day, it essentially gives out a handful of cosmetic items, all themed around a clown. The idea being to ridicule those who spend time opening loot boxes in the first place.

However, in adding the new feature, Discord seems to have accidentally viewbotted their announcement video of the loot boxes, driving a staggering amount of views on YouTube.
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First pointed out by Marvin Witt, a software developer and Discord Dataminer, he spotlighted how Discord’s announcement video of the loot boxes was sitting at 100+ million views.

“Discord managed to create a working YouTube viewbot in 2024 by playing their lootbox announcement trailer on loop in the background of the in-app toast.”

Essentially, if you opened up Discord after the loot boxes were added, you now get an in-app notification about the new feature, and in the notification is the announcement video. And it seems with every new user opening up their Discord app and seeing the notification, it’s adding views to the YouTube video.

However, Witt also pointed out it is most likely an accidental exploit by Discord’s devs, posting a screenshot of on such employee saying, “How the f*** is this video getting so many views?”

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Views are continuing to pile up for the Discord video.

Even so, it seems to be glitching the YouTube platform itself. If you were to visit Discord’s YouTube channel and sort their videos by most popular, it has been put as the lowest viewed video on the channel, despite sitting at over 500 million views at the time of writing.

In fact, as we began writing this piece, the view count sat at 340 million views, and in just over an hour went way above 500 million.

Discord’s video is about to beat out some of the highest-viewed videos on the platform in just 24 hours at this rate.
 
You realize all your favorite big YouTubers/artists do the same thing right? Most marketers do not choose organic growth. They’re telling on themselves.

I've tried to explain that to a boss of mine that doesn't understand why nobody follows their stuff... it's cause you don't spend money to advertise sweetie.
 
I wonder how long this exploit existed.
View counts are a number in a computer. Anyone with access to said computer can change them. It's impossible for them not to be vulnerable to tampering.

The problem isn't so much the existence of the vulnerability as the fact that YouTube is sufficiently corrupt that it's a problem. With enough oversight and honesty, nobody would have to worry. But we've known for years that Google is perfectly willing to fuck with things if it means extra profit.
 
As a "cahntent creatooor" myself I 100% belive that youtube fucks with numbers I occasionally do a video that gets 4 times the normal numbers for no sensible reason

I wouldn't be surprised if they have bots inflating numbers in order to push "viral content". I have a hard time believing that corporate content gets the views it does simply by virtue of people who don't log into accounts to avoid the horrific corpo infested default feed.

The bot may screw up by giving views to randos or maybe Youtube does it on purpose as an experimental content push.
 
I was under the impression embedded videos like in a synchtube exactly DIDNT count for views on youtube.
Could have sworn the occasions I've thrown something on youtube it literally has no views because it's delisted and only used in a synchtube

okay yeah I checked
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this has been viewed at least several hundred times in the five years since I upped it from usage in a synchtube, but it's only reading seven views, which makes sense for randos clicking on it occasionally
 
This does make you wonder if (((others))) have been using this or a similar exploit to astroturf their statistics to fool people...
 
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This does make you wonder if (((others))) have been using this or a similar exploit to astroturf their statistics to fool people...
It's an open secret that music labels have been doing it for their artists for years.
 
okay I've since seen it's apparently an iframe rather than a youtube embed which would make sense why it jolted the views
 
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>animefag profile picture with fag flag colored hair
It's better than that. He has a regular animefag profile picture, and a custom avatar overlay, kinda like the ones Steam has, of a clown wig and bowtie.

The irony of a top engineer at Discord being confused by this having a clown wig on his profile picture is delightful. :story:
 
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