Tracking LinusTechTips floatplane subscriber numbers and building fp-stats.com
Floatplane is the paid video platform owned by Linus Media Group which also owns the popular YouTube Channel LinusTechTips. While sites like socialblade track subscriber numbers on popular social media sites like Instagram and YouTube, there is no equivalent for the rather unknown Floatplane platform.
I created a site that aims to fill that gap: fp-stats.com.
Here is how it came together.
In August 2023, the floatplane subscriber counter turned into a live scoreboard for a YouTube controversy.
The channel was Linus Tech Tips. The controversy started with a Billet Labs water block prototype and a subsequent Gamers Nexus video questioning LTT's accuracy and methods. Two days later, former employee Madison Reeve posted allegations of mistreatment and harassment during her time at the company.
There was immense internet backlash. LTT paused video production for a week and hired a third-party to investigate. Floatplane - the paid video platform owned by LTT's parent company - saw a big drop in subscribers to the paid LTT channel. Multiple reddit posts noted the drastic drop in subscribers which was dropping every few seconds at the peak of the controversy.
Out of curiosity, I tracked the numbers, built some plots and posted them on Reddit. I also dug through old Reddit posts and web archives for earlier snapshots, going back to late 2020. Those points are sparse. Continuous tracking only started once the controversy was already underway, on the day the Gamers Nexus video went up. For a short while during and after the controversy, I maintained up-to-date charts on fp-stats.buzz (a now-defunct domain).
After controversy fell out of the public eye, I also lost interest in the topic. But my simple scraper script kept running on my server. It ran for 3 years without me maintaining it.
3 years later I finally took the time to look into the data. Turns out for the LTT channel it ran without interruption. For other channels there is a big gap in 2024. Floatplane only shows the current count, with no history. Once the number changes, the old one is gone unless someone wrote it down. As far as I know, nobody else has kept tracking this long. So I cleaned up the data and threw together a simple, easily maintainable webpage to show it. One important goal was that the site should survive another few years with little maintenance. I decided on software that just spits out static html pages. My regular well maintained nginx service then serves them.
Source is on github
If you're reading this years from now go check fp-stats.com. If the numbers are still updating: my setup is still working.