Many sites and services are experiencing interruption during the coronavirus pandemic, and YouTube is now taking proactive steps to maintain its platform. The popular content service is adjusting the default quality of videos to standard worldwide, in order to reduce stress on the systems. This news comes shortly after YouTube implemented similar practices in Europe. The initial plan is to keep this measure in place for 30 days.
Plenty of people get their gaming content from YouTube and regularly use its services. Despite gaming being a large draw for YouTube, the platform has a range of content contributors manages to cover a variety of topics beyond game streaming. Since Google purchased YouTube in 2006, the site has had a meteoritic rise to prominence and is one of the most visited video sites. The dip in quality of videos should not cause too much fallout for the giant content platform, but it may be indicative of what is to come for other companies.
The parent company of YouTube, Google, has explained why the settings for videos are changing, "We continue to work closely with governments and network operators around the globe to do our part to minimize stress on the system during this unprecedented situation." This is sound reasoning and the expansion from Europe to worldwide was justified because of "the global nature of this crisis". For viewers who insist on a higher quality, they can change the definition settings manually and it doesn't seem like this change will impact casual viewers. The greater concern for many will be whether YouTube's famous content creators will be able to make videos for the site in this time of uncertainty.
Streaming is becoming an increasingly competitive market and YouTube is a key player in that economy. These changes will likely be followed by other streaming services and Facebook is already taking similar measures. This move that allows viewers to still change their settings will likely cut the bandwidth taken up by casual viewers while enabling governing bodies to operate to the best of their ability.
While streaming companies are often concerned about competition, a global pandemic is impacting them all. Many will hope that standard service is resumed as soon as possible on all platforms. The surest way to overcome the crisis is by giving governing bodies and response teams the bandwidth to begin making inroads in combating the coronavirus and this is the approach YouTube is taking.