On a side note, "Sqids ... is an open-source library that lets you generate YouTube-looking IDs from numbers.", "The main use of Sqids is purely visual."
If the purpose of it is to give a friendlier url / id, who not use something like friendly_id instead? (http://norman.github.io/friendly_id).
The url is readable and searchable through the history.
I would much rather prefer people using "www.website.com/channel/video/a-dog-walking" instead of "www.website.com/channel/video/3cXv8c".
These are called slugs <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_URL#Slug>. If you’re willing to commit to a persistent slug, please do: they are nicer. But for many applications, e.g. most user-generated content, you can’t be confident they won’t change. There’s a reason for the general advice to not use data as a primary key in databases, but to use a separate ID.
If the purpose of it is to give a friendlier url / id, who not use something like friendly_id instead? (http://norman.github.io/friendly_id).
The url is readable and searchable through the history.
I would much rather prefer people using "www.website.com/channel/video/a-dog-walking" instead of "www.website.com/channel/video/3cXv8c".