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. 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." State news agency TASS reported that Google is allowed to return to the Russian market only if it complies with the court's decision. YouTube expanded the removal of Russian content from its site to include channels described as 'pro-Russian'. Russia threatened to ban YouTube after the platform deleted two German RT channels in September 2021.
April Fools gags
Since its purchase by Google, YouTube has expanded beyond the core website into mobile apps, network television, and the ability to link with other platforms. 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.
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. Journalist Virginia Heffernan stated in The New York Times that such videos have "surprising implications" for the dissemination of culture and even the future of classical music. 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. 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.
Some found that the platform made it very easy to purchase microtransactions, leading to numerous instances where children have spent large sums of money on the platform without parents' knowledge. Roblox's business model has also been criticized, with the platform being accused of featuring exploitative practices that target children; Professor Jane Juffer at Cornell University accused Roblox of encouraging consumerism in children. Since January 2025, United States police have arrested at least six people alleged to have used Roblox to find and sexually exploit children, including "coercing minors into making pornography". The platform has also seen numerous reports of sexual predation on child players, which a 2024 Bloomberg Businessweek report attributed to insufficient moderation, which has been viewed as overly reliant on artificial intelligence, and also due to how users on the platform are anonymous. Trusted Reviews, in its overview of the platform, also praised Roblox Studio, stating that "for anyone seeking to develop their computer science skills, or create projects that will instantly receive feedback from a huge audience, the appeal is obvious". The sound was originally produced for the video game Messiah (2000), and it was replaced in 2022 after Roblox and the sound's producer entered a copyright dispute.
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. 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. When this occurs, wettzo casino review 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 In June 2007, YouTube began trials of a system for automatic detection of uploaded videos that infringe copyright. 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.
YouTube Kids
- Investigative journalism YouTube channel People Make Games accused the platform of “exploiting” younger game developers by promising them large amounts of money from creating games, only to apply high revenue cuts and leaving creators with little to no income.
- After Knowledge Revolution was acquired by MSC Software, the two left the company and Baszucki began investing in earlier social media sites like Friendster.
- After completing development on the iOS version, Roblox began looking into releasing a version for Android devices, as well as video game consoles.
- As with games, avatar items on Roblox are mainly user-generated, though most items on the platform were made by Roblox themselves for most of the platform’s history.
- Senate introduced a resolution condemning Joseph Kony 16 days after the “Kony 2012” video was posted to YouTube, with resolution co-sponsor Senator Lindsey Graham remarking that the video “will do more to lead to (Kony’s) demise than all other action combined.”
- 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.
This blast from the past stands out on YouTube's 2025 annual list of trending videos, songs, creators and cultural moments released on Tuesday – a list otherwise dominated by tracks from the hit animated movie KPop Demon Hunters and MrBeast, who has has now appeared on YouTube's year-end top content creator lists for six consecutive years. Investigative journalism YouTube channel People Make Games accused the platform of "exploiting" younger game developers by promising them large amounts of money from creating games, only to apply high revenue cuts and leaving creators with little to no income. Features that were introduced around this time included Developer Events, a service that would allow creators to create and manage in-game events, and allow users to easily discover these events.
YouTuber earnings
- By January 2014, the platform’s monthly player count had increased 10 to 12 million monthly players, although a majority of those players did not have registered accounts and instead played as “guests”.
- In response to EU officials requesting that such services reduce bandwidth to make sure medical entities had sufficient bandwidth to share information, YouTube and Netflix said they would reduce streaming quality for at least thirty days as to cut bandwidth use of their services by 25% to comply with the EU’s request.
- They also criticized the platform’s virtual economy, comparing the limited collectibles market to gambling.
- In 2023, YouTube’s advertising revenue totaled $31.7 billion, a 2% increase from the $31.1 billion reported in 2022.
- In May 2015, Roblox released an update that adjusted its physics engine to be more smooth and realistic, rather than being oriented around blocks.
In 2014, YouTube announced that it was responsible for the creation of all viral video trends, and revealed previews of upcoming trends, such as "Clocking", "Kissing Dad", and "Glub Glub Water Dance". A video of two presenters announcing the nominated videos streamed live for 12 hours. 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.
How 'YouTube in Session' connects creators and policymakers in Washington, D.C.
Following public outrage over the unprecedented amount of unskippable ads, YouTube "ended" the experiment on September 19 of the same year. In 2020, Roku removed the YouTube TV app from its streaming store after the two companies were unable to reach an agreement. In response to EU officials requesting that such services reduce bandwidth to make sure medical entities had sufficient bandwidth to share information, YouTube and Netflix said they would reduce streaming quality for at least thirty days as to cut bandwidth use of their services by 25% to comply with the EU's request. In 2013, YouTube launched a pilot program for content providers to offer premium, subscription-based channels. Through this period, YouTube tried several new ways to generate revenue beyond advertisements. 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.
Features
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. Despite eventually being taken down, these duplicate uploads of the skit helped popularize YouTube's reach and led to the upload of more third-party content. 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. YouTube was not the first video-sharing site on the Internet; Vimeo was founded in November 2004, though that site remained a side project of its developers from CollegeHumor. The site exited beta in December 2005, by which time the site was receiving 8 million views a day.
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. 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". YouTube has enabled people to more directly engage with government, such as in the CNN/YouTube presidential debates (2007) in which ordinary people submitted questions to U.S. presidential candidates via YouTube video, with a techPresident co-founder saying that Internet video was changing the political landscape. 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.
Guilded – community chat
It was removed due to the company believing newer players would get confused by the presence of two separate currencies. In 2016, Roblox discontinued its secondary currency, "Tickets", making Robux the platform's only currency. The company also expressed interest in porting Roblox to other virtual reality devices in the future. In light of the platform's newfound popularity and use during lockdowns, Roblox introduced a new "Party Place" system, which were specific spaces that players could use to arrange meetups and events, such as virtual concerts. Additionally, the average number of daily active players in 2020 had increased by 85% compared to 2019.