GTA 6 back on the throne – Discord loses over 99 percent of views on its record-breaking video

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Stephan
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Easy come, easy go: Discord’s accidental record, with 1.4 billion views in 24 hours, goes back to the original record holder

April Fools’ Day pranks have been commonplace in the tech industry for many years. Accordingly, every year on the first of April, various new projects are presented that are not meant seriously.

This year, Discord also took the liberty of having some fun and uploaded a YouTube video announcing loot boxes for Discord.

According to Discord, not even Discord expected the video to receive around 1.4 billion views within 24 hours. These views have since been taken away from the US company’s video

Record for the most views in 24 hours

 

Why is this important? With the April Fool’s joke, Discord has broken a record that was previously withheld from the GTA 6 announcement trailer. With the revocation, Rockstar Games is once again the record holder for the most views on YouTube in 24 hours.

In detail: On April 1, Discord uploaded a YouTube video that was also displayed in a so-called in-app toast, i.e. a pop-up window in Discord.

  • The April Fool’s video ran in a continuous loop for Discord users who did not close the window.
  • This allowed the video to reach the extreme view numbers of 1.4 billion in 24 hours.
  • The views of the Discord April Fool’s joke were reduced by over 99 percent to around 3 million views by YouTube.
  • So Discord is once again far from being the record holder in the “Most views in 24 hours” category.
  • In December 2023, the video from Rockstar Games collected around 93 million views within 24 hours.

Good to know: To reach 1.4 billion unique views, around 17 percent of the entire human race would have had to watch Discord’s video

Why were Discord’s views taken away?  There has been no official statement from YouTube or Discord, but YouTube’s Fake Interactions Policy states the following:

“Anything that artificially increases the number of views, likes, comments or other metrics, whether through the use of automated systems or the unexpected display of videos, is not permitted on YouTube “

According to this rule, Discord clearly used unexpected overlays to reach the views.

Was Discord’s action intentional? Discord expressed subtle surprise about the incident in a Twitter post. Discord’s internal developers have also expressed their surprise.

Fun Fact: According to Euronews, April Fools’ jokes probably originated in 17th century Bavaria. Sending someone “into April” was first recorded as an idiom in Bavaria in 1618. However, the “April Fool’s joke” only developed in the 19th century.

Could the views have remained at 1.4 billion? Let us know in the comments!