Woah. Great idea, so many interesting things to explore. I'm surprised there's no comment yet about the video titled "The most dangerous Barack Obama video ever!!!". It's such an obvious precursor for what the internet would be come. I was genuinely shocked that it had 10,000,000+ views.<p>Preserved in a screenshot:<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/mnerRgk.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/mnerRgk.jpg</a>
Unreal. Front page: 6.9M people[1] watched a video of a small dog trying to mate with a cat. The cat wasn't interested but showed surprising forbearance.<p><i>[1] OK, yes, I know, it's 6.9M views, and probably some people watched it multiple, so it's probably 2 - 3M people, but that's still a lot of people watching a dog mating with a cat.</i>
This is neat, I tried to make a video series a while ago where I compared and contrasted what was in the front page of YouTube 10 years ago. This would have been super helpful for that. But I was shocked with how much of the stuff from back then on that site is just gone.
Similarly, <a href="https://favrd.it" rel="nofollow">https://favrd.it</a> has been posting the top tweets of 2009 (as compiled by Favrd, RIP)
Kudos to the creator for the responsible advertising strategy. The "hey -- you're using an ad blocker" message was thoughtful and non-guilt-tripping. Ads are clearly delineated as such, and the actual ads aren't spammy (carbon). Online advertising needs an overhaul and this is a step in the right direction.
There was a fun similar thing for Reddit on <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/TenYearsAgoOnReddit/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/TenYearsAgoOnReddit/</a> (and <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/FiveYearsAgoOnReddit/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/FiveYearsAgoOnReddit/</a>), sadly it stopped posting ~9 months ago.<p>Is it possible to use the search API to create something like this for HN?