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. As of September 2019, the app is available in 69 countries, including Hong Kong and Macau, and one province. 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. At the time of uploading a video, YouTube users are shown a message asking them not to violate copyright laws. 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. Any successful complaint about copyright infringement results in a YouTube copyright strike.

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. In some countries, YouTube is blocked for more limited periods of time, such as during periods of unrest, the run-up to an election, or in response to upcoming political anniversaries. In cases where the entire site is banned due to one particular video, YouTube will often agree to remove or limit access to that video in order to restore service. YouTube, a video sharing platform, has faced various criticisms over the years, particularly regarding content moderation, offensive content, and monetization.

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On September 28, 2016, YouTube named Lyor Cohen, the co-founder of 300 Entertainment and former Warner Music Group executive, the Global Head of Music. 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. On May 22, 2018, the music streaming platform named “YouTube Music” was launched for people who mostly listen to music on YouTube. 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. In 2012, clicking on the image of a DVD next to the site logo led to a video about a purported option to order every YouTube video for home delivery on DVD. 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.

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. 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 April 2013, it was reported that Universal Music Group and YouTube have a contractual agreement that prevents content blocked on YouTube by a request from UMG from being restored, even if the uploader of the video files a DMCA counter-notice. 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.

• 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 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).
• 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.
• 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).

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The next year, YouTube added a music button to the video bar that played samples from “Sandstorm” by Darude. In 2016, YouTube introduced an option to watch every video on the platform in 360-degree mode with Snoop Dogg. 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 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. If a YouTube user disagrees with a decision by Content ID, it is possible to fill in a form disputing the decision.

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Access to specific videos is sometimes prevented due to copyright and intellectual property protection laws (e.g. in Germany), violations of hate speech, and preventing access to videos judged inappropriate for youth, which is also done by YouTube with the YouTube Kids app and with “restricted mode”. 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. 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. 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.

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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 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. Following public outrage over the unprecedented amount of unskippable ads, YouTube “ended” the experiment on September 19 of the same year.

• 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 2012, clicking on the image of a DVD next to the site logo led to a video about a purported option to order every YouTube video for home delivery on DVD.
• 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.
• 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.
• On September 28, 2016, YouTube named Lyor Cohen, the co-founder of 300 Entertainment and former Warner Music Group executive, the Global Head of Music.

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 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 October 9, 2006, Google announced that they had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock. Google’s acquisition launched newfound interest in video-sharing sites; IAC, which now owned Vimeo, focused on supporting the content creators to distinguish itself from YouTube.

It was at this time that YouTube adopted the slogan “Broadcast Yourself”.The company experienced rapid growth. The Daily Telegraph wrote that in 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000. By 2010, the company had reached a market share of around 43% and more than 14 billion views of videos, according to comScore. That year, the company simplified its interface to increase the time users would spend on the site. In September 2016, YouTube Go was announced, as an Android app created for making YouTube easier to access on mobile devices in emerging markets. It was distinct from the company’s main Android app and allowed videos to be downloaded and shared with other users.

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. DeFranco argued that not being able to earn advertising revenue on such videos was “censorship by a different name”. 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”. 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. This will occur on channels whose content is deemed “advertiser-friendly”, and all revenue will go directly to Google without any share given to the uploader.

The system, which was initially called “Video Identification” and later became known as Content ID, creates an ID File for copyrighted audio and video material, and stores it in a database. When a video is uploaded, it is checked against the database, and flags the video as a copyright violation if a match is found. 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 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. 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. Creators will still be able to see the number of likes and dislikes in the YouTube Studio dashboard tool, according to YouTube.

Titled “Me at the zoo”, it shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo and can still be viewed on the site. 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. The site exited beta in December 2005, by which time the site was receiving 8 million views a day. The most active and popular exchanges for buying or selling QCN are Kraken, BYDFi & Crypto.com. The most secure hardware wallets for keeping your cryptocurrency safe are Ledger and Trezor.

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. In 2011, more than three billion videos were being watched each day with 48 hours of new videos uploaded every minute. Most of these views came from a relatively small number of videos; according to a software engineer at that time, 30% of videos accounted for 99% of views on the site. That year, the company again changed its interface and at the same time, introduced a new logo quazarcoin with a darker shade of red. A subsequent interface change, designed to unify the experience across desktop, TV, and mobile, was rolled out in 2013.

YouTube featured an April Fools prank on the site on April 1 of every year from 2008 to 2016. 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”. The next year, when clicking on a video on the main page, the whole page turned upside down, which YouTube claimed was a “new layout”. In 2010, YouTube temporarily released a “TEXTp” mode which rendered video imagery into ASCII art letters “in order to reduce bandwidth costs by $1 per second.”

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.”