5.5 billions views according to Youtube itself [1]. So it's way over the Gangnam Style (3.2B) and See you again (3.8B). Impressive, it's way more popular than I even thought possible. [1] [this video]
> The encoding still isn't ready for user driven content sites. YouTube has lots of AV1 encodes. You've probably watched AV1 encoded content without realising it. Here are a few of examples. To verify that they're AV1 encoded, right-click on the video and select "Stats for Nerds". I'm playing them in Firefox 75 beta. Halo trailer: [link] Despacito music video: [this video] Porsche Taycan commercial: [link] For some videos YouTube has AV1 encodes up to 480p, others are up to 1080p, and some are up to 4K.
You can't post direct links you get from youtube on your server to the users, they will get 403 most often if they use these links from different IP. Heck, you even have the IP in the link itself :) 2605:a140:2236:8761::1 Also for protected media, like this one: [this video] it only gives 360p and audio this way. Far from 4K you promise.
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
3 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.