[Python] When updating the video description through youtube data api v3, the request returns...

Initial description: This code that I've run many times before is now failing. I believe it has to do with the video snippet description changing. It is giving me a backendError.

When I have the following code:

request = youtube_client.videos().update(
part="snippet,status,localizations",
body={
"id": VIDEO_ID,
"localizations": translations,
"snippet": {
"categoryId": 22,
"defaultLanguage": "en",
"description": video_description, # todo: fix ; back end error occurs here
"tags": [
"automation",
"python",
"youtube api"
],
"title": title,
},
"status": {
"privacyStatus": "public"
},
}
)
response = execute_request(request)


where execute_request is the following for additional context:

def execute_request(request: HttpRequest) -> dict:
try:
response = request.execute()
except HttpError as err:
print()

error_details = err.error_details[0]

print(f"{error_details=}")

if (error_details and
err.__dict__["resp"]["status"]):
display_error_and_exit(f"HTTP error: {error_details["message"]}")
else:
display_error_and_exit(f"An unexpected HTTPError occurred while executing a request: {err}")
except Exception as err:
display_error_and_exit(f"An unexpected error occurred while executing a request: {err}")

return response


it gives me this error when I run the code:

{'message': 'Backend Error', 'domain': 'global', 'reason': 'backendError'}


However, when I leave out this line from the request:

"description": video_description,


and run the code, the request is successful.

I printed video_description which was:

video_description ="time: 01/25/2025 16:50:06 UTC\n\nthis channel has 8 subscribers.\n\nthis video was published 21 days ago in UTC.\n\nviews: 57\ncomments: 2\nlikes: 1\nfavorites: 0\n\nthese numbers were retrieved using the Youtube Data V3 API.\n\nthis video's title, description, and translations update approximately every 9 minutes.\nthe thumbnail updates once a day.\n\nthe translations were automated as well using the deepl deep-translator.\ntry switching to one of the following languages: english, spanish, german, french, and japanese."


This corresponds to the localization "en" which is in translations so it's surprising to me that if I leave out the "description" in the request, the description for the video is updated to be empty.

Here is the code for video_description:

video_description = f"time: {formatted_now} UTC\n\nthis channel has {subscriber_count} {plural_sub_text}.\n\nthis video was published {time_since_published} days ago in UTC.\n\nviews: {views}\ncomments: {comments}\nlikes: {likes}\nfavorites: {favorites}\n\nthese numbers were retrieved using the Youtube Data V3 API.\n\nthis video's title, description, and translations update approximately every 9 minutes.\nthe thumbnail updates once a day.\n\nthe translations were automated as well using the deepl deep-translator.\ntry switching to one of the following languages: {join_languages()}."


This code has previously worked many times. I even have it running on a cron job / schedule in AWS. But now the logs are showing this backendError. I'm wondering if it is a character issue within video_description.

I've done some searching but I haven't seen anyone encounter this issue. Let me know if you need more info and thank you for your help.

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