Most viewed lost videos

On July 24th, 2019, the ppopular German science and history creator Mirko Drotschmann, MrWissen2go, who has over a million subscribers, uploaded "die Wahrheit über TikTok", meaning "the truth about TikTok". As the name suggests, it is a criticism video about the TikTok social media platform.

On the next day, he inexplicably privated that video after hundreds of thousands of views. On social media sites such as Twitter, Mirko was queried by many people about the takedown but he first stayed quiet.

On May 9th, 2020, he re-published an altered version of that video, explaining he has received many inquiries about the removal of the first video and explained it contained some factual inaccuracies.

The original revision of the video has been wiped from existence. There are no backups on the live web.

Another lost video by "Simplicissimus", a German documentary channel with over a million subscribers, is from October 2016, from their early days: "Die 4 lächerlichsten Gesetze der USA". It means "The four most ridiculous laws of the USA". Over 187,740 views.

Strange video I always remember about, but never could find...probably lost because it's most likely not being sold anymore.
Around 2008 - early 2010s there was a toy commercial that, from what I remember, got decently popular on youtube for using Justice's D.A.N.C.E. as background music, a then-popular electronic song. It's how I discovered the song growing up. The toy was some sort of dancing blue monster from what I remember. It was up for a decent amount of time, but as time passes and my memory of this commercial fades, the more difficult it is to find. Combined with the fact it's a toy that's most likely not being sold anymore and possibly wasn't even that popular of the toy outside of it's youtube demonstration makes finding this commercial rather difficult.

"Incels: The Saddest Community On The Internet", published by Glink (then 53 thousand subscribers) on August 28th, 2017, was viewed over 21000 times and liked over 1500 times. And not one of these 1500 people liked it enough to download it?

YouTube has made clear that it considers involuntary celibacy a sensitive topic. Whoever discusses this topic on YouTube is on thin ice.

This is also shown by the treatment of Mumkey Jones, who made a satirical series about the story of rampage runner Elliot Rodger, see the Mumkey Jones thread.

We have passed the million-view mark of lost videos.

On 2016 the channel TTO uploaded a video called kerdeşime minecraftı öğretiyorum!! it translates to im showing my little brother minecraft!!
the video had 610.000 according to wayback machine part 2 of the video is now fully found but the part 1 is now lost to time
here is the link for the part 2
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2AzNqfmw8U&list=PLHDcaE-o3d_2oGjJXx7_6ZtPUTPDTpX6X&index=2
oh i forgot to mention that the video had 85.000 likes

2016 Baby Shark disappeared from Wayback Machine

When Baby Shark (yes, that Baby Shark. The most watched video of all time.) had just passed 7000 views, the Wayback Machine picked up the video file (proof from 2022 that the video had already been captured, see the play button; watch page at 7186 views).

In January 2024, the Wayback Machine strangely captured the video file of Baby Shark again, but the 2016 video file vanished. This was the URL to the original 2016 file (pastebin in case the encoding fails), and it is gone, as if it had never been captured. While the 2016 and 2024 files presumably have the same video content, the 2016 file must have had different encoding parameters. I was unaware the Wayback Machine would replace existing video files.

It might not have been deliberate, but a technical glitch. In either case, it is worrying.

Why is this worrying?

YouTube Studio allows uploaders to blur and cut out parts of existing videos, and the Wayback Machine might replace untampered versions of videos with tampered versions.

This once again brings me back to my point: if you truly value something, have a local backup of it. Don't solely rely on any online service, not even one as noble as the Wayback Machine, to keep something for you forever.

Sometimes I also get the error "The requested video has been archived but is not currently available for playback" - I have no idea why an archived video would not be available for playback.

2012 Gangnam Style is still there. Download it while you can.

The original 2012 encoding of Gangnam Style can be obtained at this URL (redirect if it doesn't work). It's even in full 1080p.

These days, the Wayback Machine captures YouTube videos in 720p (which is understandable due to storage consumption).