The well-known YouTuber Tom Scott started an experiment four years ago: a video that changes its title automatically. But at some point, it is going to break – and that’s also the point. We explain the background.
What is the purpose of the video? The millions-of-subscribers YouTuber Tom Scott released this video in April 2020 for one purpose only: A program he wrote regularly changes the title. Currently, it translates to: “This video has 72,119,798 views.” The goal is to always provide the most up-to-date view count as a number.
Therefore, in the linked YouTube video below, you will read a different number.
So does the title change with each view? No, not exactly. Because neither does Scott’s program query the views that regularly, nor does YouTube update the view counts every second. But the number does match, as you can see from the title and the views, more or less.
What is the purpose behind Tom Scott’s experiment?
Why is Tom Scott doing this? The background of the video is easy to explain. Tom Scott wants to show that eventually every code becomes outdated as technology advances. Then it needs to be adapted or completely discarded. In this video, the latter will happen.
Will the video eventually be inaccessible? No, as long as YouTube exists and Tom Scott keeps it online, it is very likely to be viewable. But at some point – if Scott is correct – the automatic title change will fail, and the title will remain the same eternally.
Another very well-known streamer/YouTuber is HandOfBlood. You can learn the most important facts about him in this video from MeinMMO:
Why will the code stop working? Software is constantly changing, especially large code environments like Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and others undergo continuous changes. And a program like the one from Tom Scott relies on querying data from the provider and modifying it. Once this capability is altered or even completely removed, it will no longer work.
Similar events have occurred in the past with other so-called APIs. He also talks about this in his video.
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