Right now, Steam says there are at least 8,000 active players. I decided to buy the game for the THIRD TIME, thinking it was actually alive this time, but there are only two 64-player matches—where is everyone??? Lots of YouTube videos claim the game is very much alive, so either they're lying, or there's a specific way to find matches...
Does anyone know what's going on?

not everyone plays same mode, not everyone same region, not everyone playing mp

Bro just sort the filters the right way. It's not that hard to find a guide on this. Here's a brief one. Select your region, set the players to 1-5 so that you get servers like 64/60 or 64/61. Then finally, Sort the ping by lowest. Most common game modes in Server Browser are Conquest and Operations, you can add some servers to your fav list, so you don't have to find your go-to servers everytime.
BF1's pretty much alive and no one's abandoning it dawg...