YouTube is a video sharing service that was originally launched by three early PayPal employees on February 14, 2005,¹⁾ then Google had acquired it for $1.65 billion in stocks²⁾ on October 9, 2006.³⁾⁴⁾ It has grown into a household name since then, adding live streaming in 2015.

It's a popular video sharing and live streaming service that left a massive impact on the internet, marking the end of the Flash era. However, this immense popularity has also been a detriment since the platform has a strict copyright system and a tendency to “demonetize” videos, making it an unreliable source of income to the chagrin of content creators who sometimes rely on membership platforms to back them up.

The platform started working on live streaming around 2009⁵⁾⁶⁾ and, eventually, rolled it out to everyone on December 13, 2013.⁷⁾⁸⁾ However, the service was initially shoddy, would secretly lag,⁹⁾ and their gaming experiment clearly failed.¹⁰⁾¹¹⁾ In addition, the platform doesn't advertise streams that well due to its algorithm, notification clutter,¹²⁾ and the fact that it isn't their main feature.

Despite its rough past, YouTube managed to enter the 2020s as a noteworthy live streaming contender that could rival Twitch, unlike contenders like Facebook or Kick, and it's also helped by the fact that people generally come to YouTube for clips, highlights, and past live streams. On the other hand, it's difficult to grow as a new YouTube streamer, unless you already have a community or significant connections.

On January 12, 2017, the “Super Chat” feature was introduced,¹³⁾ allowing users to pay to have a message highlighted and temporarily pinned in a ticker if they pay $5.00 minimum. In addition, users can send an animated “Super Sticker” which were added on November 5, 2019.¹⁴⁾ Of course, some streamers may disable either or both or, alternatively, have yet to monetize their channel.

• Annotations Restored
  Restores some lost annotations on older videos, which were removed in January 2019.
• CustomTube
  One of many “Old YouTube” layout extensions, except it offers a broader selection of older layouts.
• Return YouTube Dislike
  Restores the dislike button and ratio's visibility for whatever reason.
• SponsorBlock
  A crowdsourced extension that lets you skip sponsored segments, skip to the highlight, and so on.
• Truffle (GitHub)
  Overhauls their dull, uninspiring chatroom to resemble Twitch. (⚠️ Privacy concerns?)¹⁵⁾
• Unhook
  Grants the ability to hide comments, recommendations, and other unnecessary clutter or features.
• YouTube Redux
  One of many “Old YouTube” layout extensions, but specifically focused on the mid-2010s.

^{Note: All of these extensions are “Featured” in the Chrome Web Store, unless noted otherwise.}

• YouTube has two creation stories. One of the founders cites difficulties finding videos of the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show incident and Indian Ocean tsunami,¹⁶⁾ while the other two formulated a story citing difficulties sharing an alleged dinner party video that the third wasn't invited to.¹⁷⁾
• In the early years, YouTube relied on a click-through rate that encouraged clickbait thumbnails, which got only worse when custom thumbnails were silently added in the late 2000s. The issue was later remedied with a thumbnail policy,¹⁸⁾ and a new retention rate which factors in how long people stay to watch the video, but this came at the expense of short-form content.
  • The following decade would see short-form content proliferate on mobile-oriented platforms, such as Kwai, Vine (Twitter), TikTok, and Instagram (Meta). As a result, YouTube would ironically revisit the short-form content it shooed off with YouTube Shorts on September 14, 2020,¹⁹⁾ despite having built the platform on mid-form and long-form content.
• From December 2006 to February 2007, Niconico Douga would emerge as a front-end for Japanese barrage commentary on YouTube videos, then Google decided to deny access.
• Rick Astley's 1984 dance-pop song Never Gonna Give You Up, popularized by Rickrolling, is associated with the YouTube video IDs: “oHg5SJYRHA0”²⁰⁾ and “dQw4w9WgXcQ”.²¹⁾
• YouTube has a maximum upload size of 256 GB or 12 hours,²²⁾ likely meant to combat spam, yet the videos exceeding 12 hours (e.g. countdown timers, meme videos) aren't that hard to find.
• The forced Google+ social media integration with YouTube began on November 6, 2013.²³⁾ Almost everyone hated this^24)25)26)27) and they wouldn't undo this move until July 27, 2015.²⁸⁾ It didn't take long for Google+ to shutter in 2019. Surprisingly, YouTube would migrate back to the old alphanumeric handle name system around October 26, 2022.²⁹⁾
• On October 17, 2023, the “Like” and “Subscribe” button gets a small animation (“smartimation”) when the two words are said,³⁰⁾ yet there are limits to avoid it being spammed throughout the video.³¹⁾
• There should really be an option to permanently disable “ambient mode” when watching videos in dark mode, I don't need a glowing ambilight effect around the fucking video.

• YouTube (Subscriptions) - The front pages of YouTube.

☻/ This is bob. Copy and paste him so he can take over youtube.
/▌
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