If you've recently noticed some issues while trying to use the filters when searching for a video on YouTube, don't worry — you're not alone. Multiple users have been complaining that filter functionality has been completely borked for them (since March 19), and Google has admitted that this was an intentional move.

When searching for a query and setting the upload date filter to something as recent as the last hour or day, it would still bring you results from days, weeks, or months ago, much to the frustration of many users. This seemed to apply to mobile apps and YouTube on the web, naturally prompting tons of complaints.

It turns out that, in an apparent effort to stop people finding reuploads of the New Zealand terrorist attack, Google purposefully turned off the filter. Below is a statement from a Google employee on a support thread:

YouTube is aware the search/sorting functions aren't working as expected – this is temporary and part of our efforts to better respond, review and remove graphic, violative content from YouTube. Thanks for your patience while we work through this. Will update this thread when these features are working normally again, feel free to subscribe for updates.

An update was added to the post yesterday stating that the "search and sorting functions are working normally again," so everything should be fixed for all users now. If it's still broken for you, it's possible that Google is still in the process of restoring the features in your region, so hang tight. If such an enforced outage happens again, there is a workaround of sorts — use Google Search instead.

Source: Google

Thanks: Alexis Urena, @thesecondsight, Carl Schütte