A claim was made that turned the internet world upside down, and it was claimed that the first video on YouTube was not actually “Me at the zoo”. The claim was actually partially true. But this was not a new discovery, but a mistake.
The video in question, which was shared on YouTube as the ‘real first video’, appeared to have been uploaded on April 5, 2005. The ‘apparent’ upload date of the video was actually due to a bug on YouTube.
That trending video on YouTube:
“Welcome to YouTube!” The 48-second fake video titled the platform featured the names of the founders of the platform, Chad Hurley, Steven Chen and Jawed Karim. It was also shown that the video was uploaded by a user named “jawed”.
However, the video had some errors even at the very beginning. The now-corrected user “enn” appears to have signed up for YouTube in September 2005, 5 months after the video was uploaded. The reason for this was stated as “the registration date of the account was also affected during the database update”.
Another mistake was the quality of the video. YouTube brought the 480p resolution support you watch the video in 2008. But the real fault lay in the source code of the page.
The source codes of the page with the YouTube video showed the upload date of the video as January 25, 2023. In other words, the uploader managed to show the video date old by taking advantage of a vulnerability on the platform.
Here’s a statement on the subject from YouTube:
Speaking to The Verge, YouTube representative Kimberly Taylor stated that they are aware of the issue that caused the date change and are trying to fix it. Taylor also emphasized that the first video will always be “Me at the zoo,” which was uploaded on April 23, 2005.
Problem fixed:
YouTube fixed the issue that caused the video date to be changed, and the real upload date of the fake video started showing.
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