YouTube will limit streaming in European countries to standard-definition video by default, following a similar move by Netflix to curtail bandwidth usage across the continent amid the coronavirus pandemic. “[W]e are making a commitment to temporarily switch all traffic in the EU to standard definition by default,” YouTube said in a statement. “While we have seen only a few usage peaks, we have measures in place to automatically adjust our system to use less network capacity.” The decision comes after a European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton reached out to video-streaming providers and lobbied them to throttle back their streaming so internet networks would not become overloaded as millions of people are stuck at home.
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