The coronavirus pandemic has brought about a new problem with streaming services. Due to forced quarantine and lockdowns, it is apparently putting a strain on these streaming services.
YouTube is one of these major streaming services and people spend a lot of time on the service. Due to the fact that people are at home and have internet at home, there has been a surge in traffic. This even prompted European regulators to ask streaming services to downgrade their streaming video quality to ease the burden.
Now it is being reported that YouTube is extending this policy they have in Europe to the globe. According to Bloomberg, YouTube will reduce the quality of videos starting today in a bid to ease Internet traffic during the coronavirus outbreak.
Viewers will first see YouTube videos in standard definition but if they choose to, they can still be able to watch in high definition.
YouTube traffic usually spikes in the evening when people are off work but now consumption has been steady across the day.
We are used to YouTube limiting the video quality depending on the strength of our internet connection but this new policy seems like it will disregard whether your home bandwidth is more than capable of streaming a higher quality video.
“We will 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,” Google said in a statement to the publication.