On 9 November I published an open dataset: aggregate numbers from about 44,000 hours of 24/7 live streams that ran on our service in September and October. Platforms, resolutions, bitrates, uptime, how long streams stay on air. CC BY, with a CSV.

The day after, one of its headline numbers turned out to describe a single account.

This is how that happened, how we found it, and the check I now run before publishing any product statistic.

The number

The report said paid streams run longer than free-trial ones: a median continuous session of 11.3 hours on paid plans, against 2.2 hours on the trial. It looked right. People who pay for a 24/7 streaming service should keep streams up longer than people trying it for a day.…