https://twitter.com/musicnewsfact/status/983650703880138752
A few days ago, the YouTube video for Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s earth-shattering hit “Despacito” reached quite the milestone when it crossed the five billion view mark, making it the most watched video on the site by a wide margin (the next closest video, Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s “See You Again,” has about 3.5 billion views). Nothing was built to last though, and now, tragedy has befallen the video: Hackers messed with the video, which led to it being removed from the site.
The situation has since been resolved and the video is back to how it was before this happened, but last night, viewers hoping to tack onto the five billion views were greeted by something unexpected: The title of the video was changed to include the names of the hackers, and the thumbnail was replaced with an image of a masked gang holding guns. One of the supposed hackers tweeted a cryptic message to Vevo this morning, writing, “You have all my respect but do not leave the control to your site to any developer did not take into account this hacking it was a fun if we would like to harm your customers we would delete all the video but I did not delete despacito must believe me.”
@Vevo You have all my respect but do not leave the control to your site to any developer did not take into account this hacking it was a fun if we would like to harm your customers we would delete all the video but I did not delete despacito must believe me
— Prosox (@ProsoxW3b) April 10, 2018
As for other Twitter reactions, they were mixed. Some people were heartbroken, while others were happy to see the monolithic clip knocked down a peg:
https://twitter.com/Brucesnoop/status/983659040801742848
https://twitter.com/Cheez_YT/status/983690875204177920
https://twitter.com/Kyomaw/status/983681265248493568
https://twitter.com/BrokenComet/status/983674587551490049
Hackers deleted Despacito from YouTube.
A true miracle.— Kat (@kaaaaaaaaaasia) April 10, 2018
https://twitter.com/hikissmeyoufool/status/983667579007926272
the despacito video was deleted from youtube pic.twitter.com/vZrkSxPt6d
— daniel | #teamsapphira (@lgbtvelour) April 10, 2018
to whoever deleted despacito off of youtube, delete all ed sheeran’s videos while you’re at it
— ً (@nomura115) April 10, 2018
Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee weren’t the only targets of this hacking, since videos by Adele, Taylor Swift, Drake, Shakira, Selena Gomez, Chris Brown, and others were also affected. It appear, though, that everything is alright and we can put this behind us, so watch the (now-unaffected) “Despacito” video below.
