Coronavirus: YouTube Is Now Defaulting Streaming Quality To 480p Globally For A Month

YouTube will be reducing the streaming quality of videos to SD format to help ease internet traffic. Starting yesterday, the company now limits all the videos to stream at 480p by default, but users have an option to bump it higher if they want to.

Recently, internet usage has spiked as many people opt to stay at home in response to the on-going coronavirus outbreak.

YouTube conventionally experiences heavy traffic in the evening when people are off work, but now that many are working from home, the load will be experienced throughout the day.

“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,” a Google spokesperson said.

Last week, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, and also YouTube announced that they would be reducing the video streaming quality in the EU to ease on bandwidth strain due to increased number of users.

This followed after a meeting between an EU commissioner and industry players which was resolved after to help cut down the load on the region’s Internet infrastructure.

Recently, Facebook has also followed suit saying that they will apply restrictions on both Facebook and Instagram as well in the EU.

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