Webdriver Torso

The channel has three videos which do not follow the channel's standards, featuring instead internal references or jokes. One of them, titled "tmpRkRL85" (presumably standing for "Temporary Rick Roll 1985" or "Template Rickroll 1985"), plays normally until the red rectangle becomes a silhouette of Rick Astley dancing (referencing the Rickrolling phenomenon) in the second half of the video.[9][10] The video "00014" is a piece of timelapse footage recorded in Paris that shows the Eiffel Tower being lit up at night.[11][10] At the end of the video, the camera is put down, and the Webdriver Torso Facebook page is visible for a few frames.[10] The last one, "0.455442373793", is only viewable in France, requires a payment of 1.99 euros to watch, and is only payable with a French credit card. It shows an episode of the American adult cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force dubbed in Spanish.[12] While seemingly not an internal reference or joke, the May 3, 2022, upload, titled "generated 10min vid," has text in the bottom left corner that reads "kaustubhb.20220503-161459.640x360x10min.0600s - Slide (slide number with four digits)" as opposed to the usual "aqua.flv - slide (slide number with four digits)".[13]

Despite Google having clarified the channel's purpose, this did not explain the seemingly humorous references contained in some of the videos. These include the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode, the Rick Astley silhouette, and the Eiffel Tower footage. Additionally, Webdriver Torso at one time commented "Matei is highly intelligent". The "Matei" in question is unknown, but Basarab Matei,[18] Matei Mancas, Matei Gruber, Matei Ciocarlie,[19] and former Cinemassacre producer Mike Matei have all been suspected. The "Matei" comment was apparently removed at some later time.

An Italian blogger named Soggetto Ventuno found out that Webdriver Torso belongs to a network of accounts called "ytuploadtestpartner_torso".[10] Ventuno then discovered some other accounts with similar videos, many of which were pulled or made private after Ventuno's investigations were published.[10] The network linked to a Facebook page and a Twitter page, which have now both been taken down.[10] The Facebook page had mentioned Johannes Leitner, a Google Zürich employee.[10] Leitner was friends with another employee, Matei Gruber.[10] A "Matei" is mentioned on 00014 (see above).[10] Ventuno then compared scenes from pulled videos with Google Zürich photos, and noticed matching things, indicating that the pulled videos were recorded at Google Zürich,[10] and that the channel and all similar channels were run from Google Zürich.

The videos are made to test YouTube video quality. After creation, the videos are uploaded to YouTube. The uploaded videos are then compared to the videos before they were uploaded, to see how much quality was lost.[10]

When YouTube was asked about Webdriver Torso, they replied:

"We're never gonna give you uploading that's slow or loses video quality, and we're never gonna let you down by playing YouTube in poor video quality. That's why we're always running tests like Webdriver Torso."[10] This is a reference to Rick Astley's song "Never Gonna Give You Up".