Sometimes YouTube will bump you down to like 720p while still showing the quality as 1080p
I’m on gigabit fibre, so not sure why they would do that.I have noticed that though.
What I’ve noticed is the resolution isn’t necessarily lower, but the amount of detail and texture is lower
I suspect that they can detect ad blockers in more cases than they try to block them. They could do that to “divert” the ad blocker/ad blocker blocker arms race. Assuming you’re blocking ads. If not, then it’s a moot point.
I’m in IT and I find it annoying to have to update my scripts and such every time they push new anti-adblock measures. A friend of mine who is perfectly tech savvy has not bothered updating his and is getting ads on everything now.
Just imagine the number of people who are completely clueless or are just so brainwashed used to ads that they don’t even care- I’d be surprised to find functioning ad blocking on over 15% or so on videos served on YouTube. Maybe 20% because that’s kind of the economic cut-off point for when it starts hurting and they do anything about it on Google’s part.
They do that to save bandwidth and money. It’s not your bandwidth they are trying to save, it’s theirs because streaming so many videos to so many people costs money. So they are trying to be sneaky and use lower quality settings as often as possible to reduce cost.