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. 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. Video categories on YouTube include music videos, video clips, news, short and feature films, songs, documentaries, movie trailers, chicken road game download teasers, TV spots, live streams, vlogs, and more. 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.
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As of 2018update, public access to YouTube is blocked in many countries, including China, North Korea, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan. 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. Google Play Movies & TV formally shut down on January 17, 2024, with the web version of that platform migrated to YouTube as an expansion of the Movies & TV store to desktop users. 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.
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In December 2024, YouTube added the functionality of automatic language dubbing, which uses AI to produce translations of videos into different languages. 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). It also allowed users to preview videos, share downloaded videos through Bluetooth, and offered more options for mobile data control and video resolution.
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. In April 2024, YouTube announced it would be «strengthening our enforcement on third-party apps that violate YouTube’s Terms of Service, specifically ad-blocking apps». Users of ad blockers may be given a pop-up warning saying «Video player will be blocked after 3 videos».
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. 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. 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. In the United States as of November 2020, and June 2021 worldwide, YouTube reserves the right to monetize any video on the platform, even if their uploader is not a member of the YouTube Partner Program. In September 2016, after introducing an enhanced notification system to inform users of these violations, YouTube’s policies were criticized by prominent users, including Philip DeFranco and Vlogbrothers. Usually, no more than half of the eligible videos have a pre-roll advertisement, due to a lack of interested advertisers.
Some YouTube videos have themselves had a direct effect on world events, such as Innocence of Muslims (2012) which spurred protests and related anti-American violence internationally. 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. 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». By early 2013, Billboard had announced that it was factoring YouTube streaming data into calculation of the Billboard Hot 100 and related genre charts. Concurrently, old media celebrities moved into the website at the invitation of a YouTube management that witnessed early content creators accruing substantial followings and perceived audience sizes potentially larger than that attainable by television.
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- As of December 2024update the Playables catalog has over 130 games in various genres, including trivia, action and sports.
- In May 2007, YouTube launched its Partner Program (YPP), a system based on AdSense which allows the uploader of the video to share the revenue produced by advertising on the site.
- Unofficial uploads of the skit to YouTube drew in more than five million collective views by February 2006 before they were removed when NBCUniversal requested it two months later based on copyright concerns.
Despite this advice, many unauthorized clips of copyrighted material remain on YouTube. The company stated the decision was in response to experiments which confirmed that smaller YouTube creators were more likely to be targeted in dislike brigading and harassment. On August 5, 2015, YouTube patched the formerly notorious behavior which caused a video’s view count to freeze at «301» (later «301+») until the actual count was verified to prevent view count fraud. The decision of Alphabet to bring back YouTube creators who engaged in misinformation was criticized for prioritizing «free expression» over «facts». 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. On YouTube, this will be based on factors such as searches and video history, and the age of the account.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt regarded this system as necessary for resolving lawsuits such as the one from Viacom, which alleged that YouTube profited from content that it did not have the right to distribute. In the 2011 case of Smith v. Summit Entertainment LLC, professional singer Matt Smith sued Summit Entertainment for the wrongful use of copyright takedown notices on YouTube. In August 2008, a US court ruled in Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. that copyright holders cannot order the removal of an online file without first determining whether the posting reflected fair use of the material. Any successful complaint about copyright infringement results in a YouTube copyright strike.
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First released on February 15, 2015, as an Android and iOS mobile app, the app has since been released for LG, Samsung, and Sony smart TVs, as well as for Android TV. 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. The next year, the site celebrated its «100th anniversary» with a range of sepia-toned silent, early 1900s-style films, including a parody of Keyboard Cat.
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YouTube’s owner Google announced in November 2015 that they would help cover the legal cost in select cases where they believe fair use defenses apply. 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 has an estimated 14.8 billion videos with about 4% of those never having a view. 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. 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.
- 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’.
- Despite this advice, many unauthorized clips of copyrighted material remain on YouTube.
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. YouTube also released YouTube Music, a third app oriented towards streaming and discovering the music content hosted on the YouTube platform. In 2014, YouTube announced a subscription service known as «Music Key», which bundled ad-free streaming of music content on YouTube with the existing Google Play Music service. As of May 2019update, videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute, and as of mid-2024update, there were approximately 14.8 billion videos in total. YouTube gives an option for copyright holders to locate and remove their videos or to have them continue running for revenue.
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From Q to Q3 2024, YouTube’s combined revenue from advertising and subscriptions exceeded $50 billion. In 2023, YouTube’s advertising revenue totaled $31.7 billion, a 2% increase from the $31.1 billion reported in 2022. Google expanded YouTube’s business model from generating revenue through advertisements alone to offering paid content such as movies and exclusive content explicitly produced for YouTube.
Joining the YouTube Kids app, the company created a supervised mode, designed more for tweens, in 2021. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when most of the world was under stay-at-home orders, usage of services like YouTube significantly increased. YouTube released a mobile app known as YouTube Kids in 2015, which was designed to provide an experience optimized for children.
As of September 2019, the app is available in 69 countries, including Hong Kong and Macau, and one province. YouTube Kids is an American children’s video app developed by YouTube, a subsidiary of Google. 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.