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. In December 2024, YouTube began testing a new multiplayer feature for that service, supporting multiplayer functionality across desktop and mobile devices.

It features a simplified user interface, curated selections of channels featuring age-appropriate content, and parental control features. YouTube also released YouTube Music, a third app oriented towards streaming and discovering the music content hosted on the YouTube platform. In 2013, YouTube launched a pilot program for content providers to offer premium, subscription-based channels. 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 March 2017, the government of the United Kingdom pulled its advertising campaigns from YouTube, after reports that its ads had appeared on videos containing extremist content. 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”. On October 28, 2015, the service was relaunched as YouTube Red, offering ad-free streaming of all videos and access to exclusive original content. 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.

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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. Difficulty in finding enough dating videos led to a change of plans, with the site’s founders deciding to accept uploads of any video. They created posts on Craigslist asking attractive women to upload videos of themselves to YouTube in exchange for a $100 reward.

ACCESSOIRES

Like TikTok, it gives users access to built-in creative tools, including the possibility of adding licensed music to their videos. 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 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.

Google Sheets

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. According to a story that has often been repeated in the media, Hurley and Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen’s apartment in San Francisco. Established media, news, and entertainment corporations have also created and expanded their visibility to YouTube channels to reach bigger audiences. Most content is generated by individuals, including collaborations between YouTubers and corporate sponsors. In 2023, YouTube’s advertising revenue totaled $31.7 billion, a 2% increase from the $31.1 billion reported in 2022. It also offers YouTube Premium, a paid subscription option for watching content without ads.

Social impact

From Q to Q3 2024, YouTube’s combined revenue from advertising and subscriptions exceeded $50 billion. 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.

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. The platform aims to penalize creators using misleading or sensationalized titles, with potential actions including video removal or channel suspension. 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. The majority of YouTube’s advertising revenue goes to the publishers and video producers who hold the https://chickenroadapp.in/ rights to their videos; the company retains 45% of the ad revenue.

Third-Party Advertising

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. Following criticisms of its implementation of those systems, YouTube started treating all videos designated as “made for kids” as liable under COPPA on January 6, 2020. By February 2017, one billion hours of YouTube videos were being watched every day, and 400 hours worth of videos were uploaded every minute.

• 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.
• In October, YouTube announced that they would be rolling out customizable user handles in addition to channel names, which would also become channel URLs.
• 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.
• At the time of uploading a video, YouTube users are shown a message asking them not to violate copyright laws.
• TED curator Chris Anderson described a phenomenon by which geographically distributed individuals in a certain field share their independently developed skills in YouTube videos, thus challenging others to improve their own skills, and spurring invention and evolution in that field.

• Since April 2016, videos continue to be monetized while the dispute is in progress, and the money goes to whoever won the dispute.
• 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.
• 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.
• Users of ad blockers may be given a pop-up warning saying “Video player will be blocked after 3 videos”.

In March 2007, it struck a deal with the BBC for three channels with BBC content, one for news and two for entertainment. 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. It also found more “mainstream-adjacent Conservative creators” gaining over alt-right and extremist videos by 2020.

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 appeal process to ensure better communication to our creators”. 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 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.

Google Chrome

YouTube released a mobile app known as YouTube Kids in 2015, which was designed to provide an experience optimized for children. 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. 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.

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.

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).

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”. TED curator Chris Anderson described a phenomenon by which geographically distributed individuals in a certain field share their independently developed skills in YouTube videos, thus challenging others to improve their own skills, and spurring invention and evolution in that field. 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.

YouTube Play Buttons, a part of the YouTube Creator Rewards, are a recognition by YouTube of its most popular channels. 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”. The government demanded assurances that its advertising would “be delivered safely and appropriately”.

YouTube had $29.2 billion ads revenue in 2022, up by $398 million from the prior year. According to Google, YouTube had made US$15.1 billion in ad revenue in 2019, in contrast to US$8.1 billion in 2017 and US$11.1 billion in 2018. Google first published exact revenue numbers for YouTube in February 2020 as part of Alphabet’s 2019 financial report. Prior to 2020, Google did not provide detailed figures for YouTube’s running costs, and YouTube’s revenues in 2007 were noted as “not material” in a regulatory filing. The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers and the YouTube Symphony Orchestra selected their membership based on individual video performances.

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. It offers advertising-free streaming, access to original programming, and background and offline video playback on mobile devices. 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.

That year, the company simplified its interface to increase the time users would spend on the site. 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.