One of the latest apps to join the recap bandwagon is YouTube. Music streamers like Spotify and Apple Music have offered this for a while, and now even apps like Google Photos have recap features. We’re officially at that time when almost every app has an end-of-year recap for you to watch. 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. YouTube Play Buttons, a part of the YouTube Creator Rewards, are a recognition by YouTube of its most popular channels.

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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. On February 1, 2018, it was rolled out in 130 countries worldwide, including Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, and Iraq. In February 2017, YouTube Go was launched in India, and expanded in November 2017 to 14 other countries, including Nigeria, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Kenya, and South Africa. Discovery (including among others Bravo, USA Network, Syfy, Disney Channel, CNN, Cartoon Network, E!, Fox Sports 1, Freeform, FX and ESPN).

YouTuber earnings

It’s a pretty robust recap feature, showing stats about your top interests, most-watched channels, how your viewing habits changed throughout the year, and more. 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. A YouTube spokesperson stated that while the policy itself was not new, the service had "improved the notification and unlimluck review appeal process to ensure better communication to our creators".

• 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.”
• In March 2021, Google announced plans to gradually deprecate the Google Play Movies & TV app, and eventually migrate all users to the YouTube app’s Movies & TV store to view, rent and purchase movies and TV shows (first affecting Roku, Samsung, LG, and Vizio smart TV users on July 15).
• By 2019, creators were having videos taken down or demonetized when Content ID identified even short segments of copyrighted music within a much longer video, with different levels of enforcement depending on the record label.
• YouTube typically takes 45 percent of the advertising revenue from videos in the Partner Program, with 55 percent going to the uploader.
• 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.
• The lawsuit was filed due to alleged copyright infringement of Viacom’s material by YouTube.

In 2011, more than three billion videos were being watched each day with 48 hours of new videos uploaded every minute. 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. The same day, the company launched a public beta and by November, a Nike ad featuring Ronaldinho became the first video to reach one million total views.
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. In September 2016, YouTube Go was announced, as an Android app created for making YouTube easier to access on mobile devices in emerging markets.

• On February 16, 2023, Wojcicki announced that she would step down as CEO, with Neal Mohan named as her successor.
• 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”.
• Usually, no more than half of the eligible videos have a pre-roll advertisement, due to a lack of interested advertisers.
• By early 2013, Billboard had announced that it was factoring YouTube streaming data into calculation of the Billboard Hot 100 and related genre charts.
• 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.
• The developer, Google, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below.
• The video was retracted after it was found that the ads had been triggered by the use of copyrighted content in the video.

YouTube VR

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". 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.

YouTube Music

In September 2020, YouTube announced that it would be launching a beta version of a new platform of 15-second videos, similar to TikTok, called YouTube Shorts. It was distinct from the company's main Android app and allowed videos to be downloaded and shared with other users. 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. In early 2018, Cohen began hinting at the possible launch of YouTube's new subscription music streaming service, a platform that would compete with other services such as Spotify and Apple Music. 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.
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. 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. In 2022, YouTube launched an experiment where the company would show users who watched longer videos on TVs a long chain of short unskippable adverts, intending to consolidate all ads into the beginning of a video.

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". In October, YouTube announced that they would be rolling out customizable user handles in addition to channel names, which would also become channel URLs. Additionally, to compete with TikTok and Instagram Reels, YouTube released YouTube Shorts, a short-form video platform.

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. 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.