It also allowed users to preview videos, share downloaded videos through Bluetooth, and offered more options for mobile data control and video resolution. On February 28, 2017, in a press announcement held at YouTube Space Los Angeles, YouTube announced YouTube TV, an over-the-top MVPD-style subscription service that would be available for United States customers at a price of US$65 per month. Discovery (including among others Bravo, USA Network, Syfy, Disney Channel, CNN, Cartoon Network, E!, Fox Sports 1, Freeform, FX quazarcoin and ESPN). YouTube Movies & TV is a video on demand (VOD) service that offers movies and television shows for purchase or rental, depending on availability, along with a selection of movies (encompassing between 100 and 500 titles overall) that are free to stream, with interspersed ad breaks. YouTube began offering free-to-view movie titles to its users in November 2018; selections of new movies are added and others removed, unannounced each month.
In May 2013, Nintendo began enforcing its copyright ownership and claiming the advertising revenue from video creators who posted screenshots of its games. In February 2015, Nintendo agreed to share the revenue with the video creators through the Nintendo Creators Program. On March 20, 2019, Nintendo announced on Twitter that the company will end the Creators program.
In 2021, two accounts linked to RT DE, the German channel of the Russian state-owned RT network, were removed for breaching YouTube’s policies relating to COVID-19. Russia threatened to ban YouTube after the platform deleted two German RT channels in September 2021. Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, YouTube removed all channels funded by the Russian state. YouTube expanded the removal of Russian content from its site to include channels described as ‘pro-Russian’.
Getting Started: Your two paths to a YouTube Podcast
In June 2022, the War Gonzo channel run by Russian military blogger and journalist Semyon Pegov was deleted. On September 23, 2025, YouTube parent company Alphabet announced that it would reinstate creators that were banned for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Within the context of the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel and debates about free speech in the United States, Vice President JD Vance defended Kimmel’s suspension and instead cited a letter sent by Alphabet legal counsel Daniel F. Donovan to U.S.
Under YouTube’s changes to its recommendation engine, the most-recommended channel evolved from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (2016) to Fox News (2019). According to a 2020 study, viewership of far-right videos on YouTube peaked in 2017 and “a growing body of journalistic evidence” suggested that YouTube was radicalizing young men through its recommendation engine, but that such evidence was “fraught with a bias towards sensationalism”. It also found more “mainstream-adjacent Conservative creators” gaining over alt-right and extremist videos by 2020.
- In April 2012, a court in Hamburg ruled that YouTube could be held responsible for copyrighted material posted by its users.
- An independent test in 2009 uploaded multiple versions of the same song to YouTube and concluded that while the system was “surprisingly resilient” in finding copyright violations in the audio tracks of videos, it was not infallible.
- The user must go through age verification via payment, scanned ID, or selfie to access all features if they are detected to be a minor.
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In October, YouTube announced that they would be rolling out customizable user handles in addition to channel names, which would also become channel URLs. Karim said the inspiration for YouTube came from the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy when Janet Jackson’s breast was briefly exposed by Justin Timberlake during the halftime show. Karim could not easily find video clips of the incident and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami online, which led to the idea of a video-sharing site. Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not.
YouTube Movies & TV
In November 2009, YouTube launched a version of “Shows” available to UK viewers, offering around 4,000 full-length shows from more than 60 partners. In January 2010, YouTube introduced a film rentals service, available in many countries, and TV shows can be bought in several countries. President Obama held a meeting at the White House with leading YouTube content creators not only to promote awareness of Obamacare but more generally to develop ways for government to better connect with the “YouTube Generation”. Whereas YouTube’s inherent ability to allow presidents to directly connect with average citizens was noted, the YouTube content creators’ new media savvy was perceived necessary to better cope with the website’s distracting content and fickle audience.
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In 2013, YouTube launched a pilot program for content providers to offer premium, subscription-based channels. This effort was discontinued in January 2018 and relaunched in June, with US$4.99 channel subscriptions. These channel subscriptions complemented the existing Super Chat ability, launched in 2017, which allows viewers to donate between $1 and $500 to have their comment highlighted.
In January 2012, it was estimated that visitors to YouTube spent an average of 15 minutes a day on the site, in contrast to the four or five hours a day spent by a typical US citizen watching television. In 2017, viewers on average watched YouTube on mobile devices for more than an hour every day. In December 2012, two billion views were removed from the view counts of Universal and Sony music videos on YouTube, prompting a claim by The Daily Dot that the views had been deleted due to a violation of the site’s terms of service, which ban the use of automated processes to inflate view counts.
Supreme Court dismissed in 2024 the First Amendment case Murthy v. Missouri (which claimed the Biden administration had pressured social media companies to censor conservative views, government criticism, and COVID-19 misinformation), ruling 6–3 that neither the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana nor other respondents had standing to bring the case. The decision of Alphabet to bring back YouTube creators who engaged in misinformation was criticized for prioritizing “free expression” over “facts”. Hurley announced that he would be stepping down as chief executive officer of YouTube to take an advisory role and that Salar Kamangar would take over as head of the company in October 2010.
In August 2023, a Moscow court fined Google 3 million rubles, around $35,000, for not deleting what it said was “fake news about the war in Ukraine”. In October 2024, a Russian court fined Google 2 undecillion rubles (equivalent to US$20 decillion) for restricting Russian state media channels on YouTube. State news agency TASS reported that Google is allowed to return to the Russian market only if it complies with the court’s decision. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov labeled the court decision as “symbolic” and warned Google that it “should not be restricting the actions of our broadcasters on its platform.”
- YouTube incorporated the Google AdSense program, generating more revenue for both YouTube and approved content creators.
- Like TikTok, it gives users access to built-in creative tools, including the possibility of adding licensed music to their videos.
- In April 2010, Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” became the most-viewed video, becoming the first video to reach 200 million views on May 9, 2010.
- YouTube, a video sharing platform, has faced various criticisms over the years, particularly regarding content moderation, offensive content, and monetization.
Three successful complaints for copyright infringement against a user account will result in the account and all of its uploaded videos being deleted. From 2007 to 2009 organizations including Viacom, Mediaset, and the English Premier League have filed lawsuits against YouTube, claiming that it has done too little to prevent the uploading of copyrighted material. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Steve Chen, who were former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, it is the second-most-visited website in the world, after Google. In January 2024, YouTube had more than 2.7 billion monthly active users, who collectively watched more than one billion hours of videos every day.
App Functionality
Since its founding in 2005, the American video-sharing website YouTube has been faced with a growing number of privacy issues, including allegations that it allows users to upload unauthorized copyrighted material and allows personal information from young children to be collected without their parents’ consent. YouTube VR allows for access to all YouTube-hosted videos, but particularly supports headset access for 360° and 180°-degree video (both in 2D and stereoscopic 3D). Starting with the Oculus Quest, the app was updated for compatibility with mixed-reality passthrough modes on VR headsets. In 2014, YouTube announced that it was responsible for the creation of all viral video trends, and revealed previews of upcoming trends, such as “Clocking”, “Kissing Dad”, and “Glub Glub Water Dance”.
They created posts on Craigslist asking attractive women to upload videos of themselves to YouTube in exchange for a $100 reward. Difficulty in finding enough dating videos led to a change of plans, with the site’s founders deciding to accept uploads of any video. YouTube has had unprecedented social impact, influencing popular culture, internet trends, and creating multimillionaire celebrities.