There was recently a scare that YouTube may be locking 4K video streaming behind a premium paywall. A small number of people who were selected to be a part of the video hosting platform’s experiment shared screenshots of this, and were understandably none too pleased. It looks like the nightmare is now over, at least for now, as the company says that it has “fully tuned off this experiment”.
While YouTube never made an official announcement, the platform confirmed the end of the experiment in a tweet. Specifically, a reply to a reply to its own tweet. The entire thread is a little strange, but at least there is a tangible takeaway from it all.
we've fully turned off this experiment. viewers should now be able to access 4K quality resolutions without Premium membership. we're here if you have other q's
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 17, 2022
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It’s worth iterating though that the platform never made clear the number of people that were involved in the experiment. That, and the company hasn’t announced what it learned from it. For most people, it was taken as a sign of what is to come, though it can only be considered fortunate that it didn’t turn out that way. Those who were already paying for premium were the least affected, if affected at all.
YouTube has done a number of what it calls experiments over the past few years. Some of which it has reversed, like this one. Others, like the removal of the public dislike count, has been forced through despite massive backlash. So while this experiment has been turned off for now, it’s entirely possible that it will get rolled out later anyway.
(Source: YouTube / Twitter)
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