HTTPS Meme
On May, 6, 2015, a user @soliloquial reported an issue regarding deprecated YouTube API:
YouTube is now returning the following for all data API requests from the old API:
%YouTube API response here%
Clearly, this does not contain the desired information, and as a result all YouTube scrobbles are gibberish.
This issue made the extension to scrobble a "https" string as an artist, and a "youtube.com/devicesupport" one as a track title.
Since YouTube is the most popular service, this issue led to some interesting things.
The "https — youtube.com/devicesupport" was scrobbled 645k times by almost 30k users.
Some creative users wrote a bio for the "https" artist:
HTTPS is an iconic band whose identity has been kept a secret. The band went through many changes over the years, originally named Hypertext Transfer Protocol the band more commonly went by HTTP. After an incident in the 80's, fearing for their safety, the band ramped up their security and went under a new name HTTPS.
The band, while popular on the web really took off on May 5th, 2015 after a successful viral marketing campaign where they were able to hide themselves in thousands of youtube videos. The gutsy stunt lead them to shoot up the last.fm charts with over 75,000 in it's first few days.
To date their most successful track "youtube.com/devicesupport"; a 20 minute and 14 second track that shows their signature minimalist style, containing nothing.
as well as for the "youtube.com/devicesupport" track:
One of the dopest and dankest tracks created of all time, this important masterpiece plays a role in the 1998 Detroit Dream Pop Post Turntabalism scene, the Latin America meringue popularity increase, and the San Andreas Fault.
A user @pooon on Last.fm also created a cover art for the "https" artist.
Click to expand the cover art image
A hotfix was added in v1.46 by @david-sabata (the former project developer and maintainer) via 84933bd.