The format's decline began when Apple’s iOS famously refused to support Flash, and it was officially deprecated by Adobe in late 2020 due to security vulnerabilities and the efficiency of newer formats. Popular Videos & "FLV Filmography"
Most importantly, FLV powered the early days of , Google Video , Newgrounds , and Dailymotion .
During its formative years, YouTube used FLV as its primary format because it worked consistently across different operating systems.
Millions of FLV files were lost because they lived exclusively on niche forums (Something Awful, EbaumsWorld) that never migrated to HTML5. When Flash died, the links went grey.