- Joined
- Feb 23, 2019
This actually happened a while ago, probably last year but I don't quite remember; I just recall noticing that this massive feature was silently removed. I'm also not sure about how known this is or was, so I just want to post about it on here to have a record that it existed.
The reason why this is a "semi-secret" feature is because it didn't make any sense that this would be accessible, and because as far as I know it was never explained how it really worked in the API documentation (at least in the last decade). And if it is, I completely missed it because it's definitely not in clear sight, and the description where it's supposed to be explained, lacks that information.
I am not the most technical person, so if you have more info, feel free to add. I think this fuck-up is related to the Google+ nonsense back in the day.
So one of the methods of the API lets you retrieve comments made under a channel, that is to say, that if you want to look for all the comments that mention "a red car", unless something goes wrong, it should give you all the comments (under any video of the selected channel) that mention "a red car" (quotes makes it literal, without quotes may not).
This is handled by the searchTerms parameter, where you put what word/phrase you want to search, but this is where the obscure feature lied, and it was that for some reason it also worked for names of users/YouTube accounts. But I'm not talking about the clear on sight usernames or moniker, no, it must have been about the actual "name" you put for that account, that was not necessarily visible to the public.
So if you searched for "John Doe" (random example), it would retrieve comments that mention "John Doe", but if someone had that name set for their account (and not necessarily a visible username, their visible name could be DarkKnight95 or whatever), it would also retrieve his comment/s, even if he didn't say that.
Making, by inference, a direct relationship you'd be able to notice between the account and that name (in other words, you'd know that in the previous example, DarkKnight95 set his name as John Doe).
The API documentation claims that the response is only for comments that contain the searched term, which as explained, is untrue/incomplete, and which for people who have not done trial-and-error, would make this a "secret" feature, and even a potentially dangerous one, as far as privacy goes.
An example of putting this into practice was made in the DSP sub-board, where (wasn't actually necessary because the person was transparent about his identity), you could verify that one YouTube commenter apparently named some random stuff, had actually set his real name somewhere in the settings of his account. So you could get all of his comments by searching for his real name.
Another example was verifying that another account was actually an older one seen before, but refurbished from scratch to make it appear as a new one, not knowing that their secret name was tying them to the past all along.
But anyways, they fixed this; it was however a nice feature that I don't think many knew about, like an "easter-egg" of what you could do with YT to infer information from accounts/play detective with it.
The reason why this is a "semi-secret" feature is because it didn't make any sense that this would be accessible, and because as far as I know it was never explained how it really worked in the API documentation (at least in the last decade). And if it is, I completely missed it because it's definitely not in clear sight, and the description where it's supposed to be explained, lacks that information.
I am not the most technical person, so if you have more info, feel free to add. I think this fuck-up is related to the Google+ nonsense back in the day.
So one of the methods of the API lets you retrieve comments made under a channel, that is to say, that if you want to look for all the comments that mention "a red car", unless something goes wrong, it should give you all the comments (under any video of the selected channel) that mention "a red car" (quotes makes it literal, without quotes may not).
This is handled by the searchTerms parameter, where you put what word/phrase you want to search, but this is where the obscure feature lied, and it was that for some reason it also worked for names of users/YouTube accounts. But I'm not talking about the clear on sight usernames or moniker, no, it must have been about the actual "name" you put for that account, that was not necessarily visible to the public.
So if you searched for "John Doe" (random example), it would retrieve comments that mention "John Doe", but if someone had that name set for their account (and not necessarily a visible username, their visible name could be DarkKnight95 or whatever), it would also retrieve his comment/s, even if he didn't say that.
Making, by inference, a direct relationship you'd be able to notice between the account and that name (in other words, you'd know that in the previous example, DarkKnight95 set his name as John Doe).
The API documentation claims that the response is only for comments that contain the searched term, which as explained, is untrue/incomplete, and which for people who have not done trial-and-error, would make this a "secret" feature, and even a potentially dangerous one, as far as privacy goes.
An example of putting this into practice was made in the DSP sub-board, where (wasn't actually necessary because the person was transparent about his identity), you could verify that one YouTube commenter apparently named some random stuff, had actually set his real name somewhere in the settings of his account. So you could get all of his comments by searching for his real name.
Another example was verifying that another account was actually an older one seen before, but refurbished from scratch to make it appear as a new one, not knowing that their secret name was tying them to the past all along.
But anyways, they fixed this; it was however a nice feature that I don't think many knew about, like an "easter-egg" of what you could do with YT to infer information from accounts/play detective with it.
