In early 2014, internet sleuths found a YouTube channel called Webdriver Torso that had uploaded more than 77,000 videos. Each was 11 seconds long and identical in form: a series of one-second slides, each showing a blue rectangle and a red rectangle on a white background, with a beeping tone. There was no description and no explanation. People guessed it was a numbers station, an alien message, or part of the Cicada 3301 puzzle.
It was Google. In June 2014 YouTube confirmed the channel was its own, used to test how much quality video loses during upload and streaming — the rectangles get uploaded, then compared against the originals.
YouTube announced it with a Rick Astley joke: "we're never gonna give you uploading that's slow or loses video quality… That's why we're always running tests like Webdriver Torso."
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