YouTuber tricks YouTube into sending him a Diamond Play Button award

Brent Koepp
youtuber holding play button

A content creator hilariously exploited an oversight on YouTube’s site, and tricked the Google-owned company into sending him a Diamond Play Button which is awarded to channels with 10 million subscribers. 

YouTube first introduced the Play Button award in 2012 for channels that had broken the 1 million subscriber mark. Since then, several iterations of the prestigious item have been created to celebrate the platform’s most followed personalities.

However on July 26, content creator Jack Welsh showed how an exploit on the company’s website tricked them into sending him the highly coveted Diamond Play Button despite being nowhere close to qualifying for it.

youtuber ordering youtube play button
The YouTuber hilariously used an exploit to get Diamond Play Button award.

YouTuber tricks YouTube into sending award

The YouTuber explained that channels are able to order replacement Play Button awards from the company that makes them if they have a redemption code, however content creator ‘joshkapranos’ messaged him about an exploit involving the site.

Unbelievably, changing the end of the URL to the name of the Diamond award gave him access to a page where he could order it for $3,000 dollars. “The fact that I’m able to access this page… I shouldn’t be able to!” he exclaimed.

Given that the company knows who Welsh is since his channel has 1.5 million subscribers, he got his friend ‘Mini Muka’ to place the order. Using Josh’s replacement code, the two hilariously put the name of the award under popular YouTuber KSI.

Shockingly, it worked. Jack and Muka both broke into laughter as the coveted Diamond Play Button arrived. The two posed with the award before the YouTuber later explained that he was going to hire an engraver to put his name on it.

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The YouTuber genuinely was floored that the exploit worked, and joked that he now had more Play Buttons than KSI. “I just can’t believe it. I honestly wasn’t sure I’d ever manage to get a hold of one of these,” he said.

Jack clarified that he had informed the award company about the exploit before the upload went live, so that viewers wouldn’t flood the site trying to order unearned awards.

About The Author

Brent is a former writer at Dexerto based in the United States, who covered topics such as Pokemon, Gaming, and online Entertainment.