In July 2023, YouTube removed the channel of British journalist Graham Phillips, active in covering the war in Donbas from 2014. In June 2022, the War Gonzo channel run by Russian military blogger and journalist Semyon Pegov was deleted. 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. Should the uploader want to monetize the video again, they may remove the disputed audio in the “Video Manager”.
- On November 1, 2022, YouTube launched Primetime Channels, a channel store platform offering third-party subscription streaming add-ons sold a la carte through the YouTube website and app, competing with similar subscription add-on stores operated by Apple, Prime Video and Roku.
- YouTube Premium was originally announced on November 12, 2014, as “Music Key”, a subscription music streaming service, and was intended to integrate with and replace the existing Google Play Music “All Access” service.
- 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.
- That year, the company simplified its interface to increase the time users would spend on the site.
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In April 2017, YouTube set an eligibility requirement of 10,000 lifetime views for a paid subscription. Usually, no more than half of the eligible videos have a pre-roll advertisement, due to a lack of interested advertisers. According to TubeMogul, in 2013 a pre-roll advertisement on YouTube (one that is shown before the video starts) cost advertisers on average $7.60 per 1000 views. Google stated that it had “begun an extensive review of our advertising policies and have made a public commitment to put in place changes that give brands more control over where their ads appear”.
Joining the YouTube Kids app, the company created a supervised mode, designed more for tweens, in 2021. In response to EU officials requesting that such services reduce bandwidth to make sure medical entities had sufficient bandwidth to share information, YouTube and Netflix said they would reduce streaming quality for at least thirty days as to cut bandwidth use of their services by 25% to comply with the EU’s request. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when most of the world was under stay-at-home orders, usage of services like YouTube significantly increased.
Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, YouTube removed all channels funded by the Russian state. Since April 2016, videos continue to be monetized while the dispute is in progress, and the money goes to whoever won the dispute. The use of Content ID to remove material automatically has led to controversy in some cases, as the videos have not been checked by a human for fair use. When this occurs, the content owner has the choice of blocking the video to make it unviewable, tracking the viewing statistics of the video, or adding advertisements to the video.citation needed When a video is uploaded, it is checked against the database, and flags the video as a copyright violation if a match is found.
Copyright issues
The site grew rapidly; in July 2006, the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. Despite its growth and success, the platform has been criticized for its facilitation of the spread of misinformation and copyrighted content, routinely violating its users’ privacy, excessive censorship, endangering the safety of children and their well-being, and for its inconsistent implementation of platform guidelines. YouTube incorporated the Google AdSense program, generating more revenue for both YouTube and approved content creators. In February 2015, Nintendo agreed to share the revenue with the video creators through the Nintendo Creators Program. In 2010, it was reported that nearly a third of the videos with advertisements were uploaded without permission of the copyright holders.
YouTube Premium (formerly Music Key and YouTube Red) is YouTube’s premium subscription service. In 2016, YouTube introduced an option to watch every video on the platform in 360-degree mode with Snoop Dogg. The next year, YouTube added a music button to the video bar that played samples from “Sandstorm” by Darude. A video of two presenters announcing the nominated videos streamed live for 12 hours. In 2013, YouTube teamed up with satirical newspaper company The Onion to claim in an uploaded video that the video-sharing website was launched as a contest which had finally come to an end, and would shut down for ten years before being re-launched in 2023, featuring only the winning video. In October 2024, a Russian court fined Google 2 undecillion rubles (equivalent to US$20 decillion) for restricting Russian state media channels on YouTube.
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- 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.
- While some users praised the move as a way to discourage trolls, others felt that hiding dislikes would make it harder for viewers to recognize clickbait or unhelpful videos and that other features already existed for creators to limit bullying.
- During the COVID-19 pandemic, when most of the world was under stay-at-home orders, usage of services like YouTube significantly increased.
- The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports.
- The majority of YouTube’s advertising revenue goes to the publishers and video producers who hold the rights to their videos; the company retains 45% of the ad revenue.
A YouTube spokesperson stated that while the policy itself was not new, the service had “improved the notification and appeal process to ensure better communication to our creators”. The video was retracted after it was found that the ads had been triggered by the use of copyrighted content in the video. The Guardian newspaper, as well as other major British and U.S. brands, similarly suspended their advertising on YouTube in response to their advertising appearing near offensive content. In March 2007, it struck a deal with the BBC for three channels with BBC content, one for news and two for entertainment.
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In May 2013, YouTube introduced a trial scheme of 53 subscription channels with prices ranging from $0.99 to $6.99 a month. The vast majority of videos on YouTube are free to view and supported by advertising. In May 2018, after London Metropolitan Police claimed that drill music videos glamorizing violence gave rise to gang violence, YouTube deleted 30 videos.
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YouTube has cited the effectiveness of Content ID as one of the reasons why the site’s rules were modified in December 2010 to allow some users to upload videos of unlimited length. 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. In June 2007, YouTube began trials of a system for automatic detection of uploaded videos that infringe copyright.
The study also concluded that YouTube was becoming an important platform by which people acquire news. A Pew Research Center study reported the development of “visual journalism”, in which citizen eyewitnesses and established news organizations share in content creation. By early 2013, Billboard had announced that it was factoring YouTube streaming data into calculation of the Billboard Hot 100 and related genre charts. Videos of the 2.5% of artists categorized as “mega”, “mainstream” and “mid-sized” received 90.3% of the relevant views on YouTube and Vevo in that year. Indie creators have built grassroots followings numbering in the thousands at very little cost or effort, while mass retail and radio promotion proved problematic. Businesses, schools, government agencies, and other private institutions often block social media sites, including YouTube, due to its bandwidth limitations and the site’s potential for distraction.
On November 11, 2021, after testing out this change in March of the same year, YouTube announced it would start hiding dislike counts on videos, making them invisible to viewers. That was disputed by Billboard, which said that the two billion views had been moved to Vevo, since the videos were no longer active on YouTube. In December 2024, YouTube introduced new guidelines prohibiting videos with clickbait titles to enhance content quality and combat misinformation. After testing earlier in 2021, YouTube removed public display of dislike counts on videos in November 2021, claiming the reason for the removal was, based on its internal research, that users often used the dislike feature as a form of cyberbullying and brigading. 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. This effort was discontinued in January 2018 and relaunched in June, with US$4.99 channel subscriptions.
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As part of YouTube Music, Universal and YouTube signed an agreement in 2017, which was followed by separate agreements other major labels, which gave the company the right to advertising revenue when its music was played on YouTube. On November 1, 2016, the dispute with GEMA was resolved, with Google content ID being used to allow advertisements to be added to videos with content protected by GEMA. Three successful complaints for copyright infringement against a user account will result in the account and all of its uploaded videos being deleted. YouTube does not view videos before they are posted online, and it is left to copyright holders to issue a DMCA takedown notice pursuant to the terms of the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act. At the time of uploading a video, YouTube users are shown a message asking them not to violate copyright laws. YouTube has faced numerous challenges and criticisms in its attempts to deal with copyright, including the site’s first viral video, Lazy Sunday, which had to be taken down, due to copyright concerns.
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In May 2024, YouTube introduced Playables, a set of around 75 free-to-play games that can be played on the platform. Starting with the Oculus Quest, the app was updated for compatibility with mixed-reality passthrough modes on VR headsets. In November 2016, YouTube released YouTube VR, a dedicated version with an interface for VR devices, for Google’s Daydream mobile VR platform on Android. On May 25, 2023, YouTube announced that they would be shutting down this feature on June 26, 2023. On October 15, 2024 the platform officially extended the length of shorts to 3 minutes. In May 2022, Google announced that they would be shutting down YouTube Go in August 2022.
It offers advertising-free streaming, access to original programming, and background and offline video playback on mobile devices. 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”. In 2008, all links to videos on the main page were redirected to Rick Astley’s music video “Never Gonna Give You Up”, a prank known as “rickrolling”. YouTube expanded the removal of Russian content from its site to include channels described as ‘pro-Russian’. Russia threatened to ban YouTube after the platform deleted two German RT channels in September 2021.
On October 9, 2006, Google announced that they had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock. The choice of the name youtube.com led to problems for a similarly named website, utube.com. Despite eventually being taken down, these duplicate uploads of the skit helped popularize YouTube’s reach and led to the upload of more third-party content. Besides helping to bolster ratings and long-term viewership for Saturday Night Live, “Lazy Sunday”‘s status as an early viral video helped establish YouTube as an important website. YouTube was not the first video-sharing site on the Internet; Vimeo was founded in November 2004, though that site remained a side project of its developers from CollegeHumor. The site exited beta in December 2005, by which time the site was receiving 8 million views a day.
Like TikTok, it gives users access to built-in creative tools, including the possibility of adding licensed music to their videos. On October 28, 2015, the service was relaunched as YouTube Red, offering ad-free streaming of all videos and access to exclusive original content. In May 2013, Nintendo began enforcing its copyright ownership and claiming the advertising revenue from video creators who posted screenshots of its games. On April 6, 2017, YouTube announced that to “ensure revenue only flows to creators who are playing by the rules”, it would change its practices to require that a channel undergo a policy compliance review, and have at least 10,000-lifetime views, before they may join the YouTube Partner Program. In early April 2017, the YouTube channel h3h3Productions presented evidence claiming that a Wall Street Journal article had fabricated screenshots showing daman game major brand advertising on an offensive video containing Johnny Rebel music overlaid on a Chief Keef music video, citing that the video itself had not earned any ad revenue for the uploader.
YouTube has an estimated 14.8 billion videos with about 4% of those never having a view. 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. On April 9, 2025, YouTube expressed support for the NO FAKES Act of 2025, introduced by Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and announced an expansion of its pilot program that is designed to identify content generated by AI. On July 30, 2025, amid the implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023 in the United Kingdom, Google announced that it would begin to enforce “age assurance” policies for selected users in the United States as a trial. Around the same time, YouTube started using server-side ad injection, which allows the platform to inject the ads directly into the video, instead of having the ad as a separate file which can be blocked.
The government demanded assurances that its advertising would “be delivered safely and appropriately”. In June 2008, a Forbes magazine article projected the 2008 revenue at $200 million, noting progress in advertising sales. 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”.