YouTube user has published 80,000 videos

Perhaps the strangest YouTube video channel belongs to an unknown Webdriver Torso user. He has published nearly 80,000 video clips of algorithmic origin. Each video 10 seconds long consists of 10 fragments of 1 second with monophonic sounds. In each fragment on the screen there is a static frame with blue and red rectangles of arbitrary size, which can overlap each other. The total amount of video material in the compilation reached 236 hours, after which the broadcast ceased.



The activity of Webdriver Torso attracted public attention after the publication on April 26 in the popular blog BoingBoing.
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To date, several versions have been expressed that this may be. Initially, BoingBoing offered a version that this is a modern version of the secret radio stations of the Cold War, like the UVB-76 station near Moscow. Since 1982, it has been broadcasting continuous round-the-clock noise at a frequency of 4,625 kHz. The buzzing sound lasts 0.8 seconds, is interrupted for 1-1.3 seconds and repeats 21-34 times per minute. The destination station is unknown.

During the 32 years of broadcasting, the station only a few times transmitted an encrypted message in Russian. For example, below is a broadcast recording on February 21, 2006.



Maybe someone is now transmitting encrypted messages already via YouTube, and each combination of colored rectangles are encryption bytes?

Soon another version was put forward by the American software tester Isaul Vargas. In an interview with The Guardian, he said that he recognized a demo in the video he had shown, which he had seen a year ago at an automation conference. The demo was shown by a European company developing an application for streaming video from set-top boxes on YouTube. The software must reliably and quickly publish videos, so it uses YouTube as a test platform to test the connection, and a combination of rectangles to transmit service information with further pattern recognition.

The BBC journalistic investigation , in general, does not contradict the version of Vargas. Using the YouTube API, they downloaded the metadata of all the videos. It turned out that the publication of the videos took place around the clock with an interval of, on average, 2 minutes. On some days, up to 400 videos were published. The very first video is in paid access and is available only to users from France. This is a fragment from the animated television series Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Another different from all - video number 1182 , taken from the balcony. Six-second view of the Eiffel Tower with the comment of the author “Matei is very smart” (“Matei is highly intelligent”). By the way, this is the only commentary of the author on all the videos of the channel, he does not answer questions now.