Netflix, YouTube Cut Streaming Quality In Europe Over COVID-19 Crisis

We can only imagine that those of you who haven’t had to work remotely in the midst of the quarantine has been running up the YouTube and Netflix streams. In Europe, where the Coronavirus pandemic has hit extremely hard, there seems to be a continental crisis surrounding Netflix and YouTube with both companies announcing that they’ll be reducing the streaming quality for the next 30 days.

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CNN reports that the increase in streaming on both YouTube and Netflix could crash the Internet in the next month in Europe if they don’t act immediately. That being said, EU officials have already asked the public to stop streaming in HD when necessary to ease the internet. However, both reps for Netflix and Google, who owns YouTUbe, issued statements regarding the use of their platforms moving forward.

“We estimate that this will reduce Netflix traffic on European networks by around 25% while also ensuring a good quality service for our members,” a rep for Netflix said.

A rep for Google stated they’re trying to ease the stress on the system without rendering the quality for their users. “We will continue working with member state governments and network operators to minimize stress on the system, while also delivering a good user experience,” a rep said. 

Well, for those of you in Europe, try to go for 1080p instead of 4K. I promise it isn’t that bad.