YouTube

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YouTube

Basic Information
Release Year	2005
Product Type	Video sharing and streaming
In Production	Yes
Official Website	https://youtube.com

YouTube, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, is a global video-sharing platform and one of the most visited websites in the world. Acquired by Google in 2006, YouTube has since become the dominant platform for sharing videos on the internet.

YouTube's business model is built around advertising revenue, with creators earning money through ad views, subscriptions, and other monetization options. The platform hosts a wide range of content, including music videos, tutorials, news, vlogs, and live streams. YouTube has also begun offering subscription services, such as YouTube Premium and YouTube TV, for ad-free experiences, exclusive content, and live television.

YouTube has faced criticism and regulatory scrutiny on multiple fronts. Concerns have been raised about content moderation policies, the platform's role in the spread of misinformation, and its impact on user privacy, particularly in relation to data collection practices. Additionally, YouTube has been under fire for its algorithms, which some argue promote harmful or divisive content to maximize engagement.

Anti-consumer actions

Advertising overload in YouTube

See also: Advertising Overload

Advertisements are YouTube's primary source of revenue, but because the platform is run by a publicly shared parent company, it is forced to grow its revenue by any means necessary. This has led to advertisements becoming more pervasive on the platform such as an increasing number of spaces for static ads, longer ad breaks (which some users have documented being longer than the videos they watch), increased ad frequency in videos, and poorer quality ads. Practices are also put into place in order to force non-paying users into seeing these ads as well, such as subscription-gating playing videos in the background. Even these paywalls are beginning to lose their value, as users have reported seeing ads while paying for YouTube Premium.

Furthermore, even if a user pays for YouTube premium, they do not necessarily receive an ad-free experience - they may still see ads within the video they watch, such as sponsored segments. YouTube has added a "skip" feature, but it has been reported that this does not work consistently.

Crackdown against ad-blockers

Related to the incessant usage of ads on the platform, consumers have been needing to use adblockers while on the platform merely to watch their videos. Unfortunately, Google sparked a game of cat and mouse, and has been attempting to integrate a variant of DRM onto YouTube to make consumers watch ads. However, these attempts usually only work for a short period before AdBlock tools find new ways to circumvent the advertisements, resulting in these actions taking place reflecting the Streisand Effect.

The YouTube Mobile app allows you to download videos for offline consumption if you have a YouTube Premium subscription. However, the app's DRM prevents you from watching downloaded videos, unless the app has "phoned home" in the last 48 hours. This caveat is not clearly disclosed on the main YouTube Premium page, instead requiring the user to navigate support articles to discover this limitation.

Paywalling standard browser features

Another premium feature of the YouTube mobile app is the ability to play videos in the background. Without a premium subscription, neither the app nor a web browser will play YouTube videos in the background. However, the default HTML5 video player supports this with no extra effort needed from the developer.