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YouTube video prompts shock after appearing to be the site’s oldest ever – but turns out to be fake

 (Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

YouTube’s oldest video appeared to have been briefly overtaken this week – before it became clear that the site had been struck by a bug.

The site’s first uploaded video – named ‘Me at the Zoo’, and uploaded in 2005 – has long been famous on YouTube.

But over the last day it appeared that might have been wrong. Another video showed on the site that appeared to have been uploaded before that: on April 6, 2005, before the official first video appeared on April 23.

That prompted shock as people came to believe that the famous first video on the site had been wrong all that time.

The video, titled ‘Welcome to YouTube!!!’ looked like any other video, including its unusual upload date. But it quickly became clear that the date seemed to be the result of a bug.

A number of hints suggested that the video’s date was incorrect. It was uploaded in 480p quality, despite that not being available until 2008, and it included references to the date the video was “premiered”, even though that feature was not officially added until 2011.

The video remains on the site. It appears intentionally made to ape the style of early YouTube, using the site’s old logo and the aesthetic of the early internet.

It also claimed to be from “Chad, Steve and Jawed”, presumably a reference to the site’s three co-founders.

Its upload date has now however been changed, and read “one day ago” at the time of publication.

The company confirmed to The Verge that the video was the result of a bug, and that ‘Me at the Zoo’ is definitively its oldest video.

“We’re aware of an issue that allowed the upload date of this video to be changed, and are working on a fix,” a spokesperson told the site. “Rest assured, the oldest video on YouTube will always be ‘Me at the zoo’ which was uploaded on April 23, 2005 by one of our co-founders and helped kickstart more than 17 years of creativity on YouTube.”

It has been viewed more than 250 million times.