Yeah, I remember that. Specifically what I remember is a discussion on reddit about how a lot of youtube videos have useless stuff in the first ~30% and someone who joined the comments -- wadsworth -- also happened to work at youtube. Apparently with enough freedom to have an extra parameter check deployed to production. Probably around 2012. The parameter I remember was wadsworth=1.
Edit: Got the story wrong. Wadsworth was just a commenter with an opinion and someone who worked at youtube had a sense of humor.
Wadsworth's constant lives on in spirit via SponsorBlock blocking all the intro BS and allowing users to set a timestamp as a highlight with a button to skip to said highlight. I use that feature all the time.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-wadsworth-constant