YouTube Premium Referral Program to Give up to 12 Free Months of Service

YouTube Premium has launched a referral program through which current subscribers can receive a shareable code to refer people to joining the service. Under this referral program, subscribers who make these referrals can receive upto a year of free service on the platform. This referral program appears to be similar to the one YouTube TV launched this year.

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YouTube Music for Android to have Cleaner Settings

Towards the beginning of this year, YouTube Music had updated its Home feed for tablets. At that time, the Google-owned company had hinted that more UI optimizations were in the works, especially when it comes to playlists. Now, making good on that promise, YouTube Music offers an improved settings layout on Android.

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Google’s Parent Company Alphabet Misses Estimates on YouTube

Alphabet Inc., which is the parent company of Google, has reported its first-quarter revenue. The numbers reported by Alphabet Inc. have fallen short of analysts’ expectations. This rare miss for the tech giant may have been caused by slower ad sales in Europe, coupled with a lackluster performance by YouTube. In extended trading, the shares declined by approximately 6%. Alphabet Inc. has also announced a $70 billion share buyback program.

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YouTube Gets New Animation for ‘Like’ Button on Mobile

Tech giant Google has introduced a brand new “Like” button animation on YouTube mobile. Reports on new animation date as far back as over a month ago, such as in the r/YouTube subreddit. The new animation may have been rolling out for a while now, however, it is appearing much more widely for users only now. As of now, the new “Like” button animation is still limited to YouTube on Android and iOS devices. The plain animation that fills the “Like” button and increases the like counter still appears on YouTube for desktop. There has been no news on if or not the updated animation will come to YouTube for desktop.

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Google Fined by Russia over Ukraine Videos on YouTube

On Thursday, a Russian court issued a series of small fines on U.S. tech giant Google for not having taken down contentious YouTube videos regarding the Kremlin’s military operation in Ukraine. The Moscow court ordered Google to pay a total sum amounting to 11 million rubles ( or $135,000 in USD) for disregarding orders by the state media regulator to remove posts that allege heavy Russian losses in Ukraine.

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Apple’s App Tracking Restrictions Cost YouTube and Facebook Billions

Apple’s app tracking crackdown is costing Facebook & YouTube billions. Pictured youtube icon open on a smartphone, a laptop, and a tablet.

Since a lot of users’ private and sensitive data is stored on digital devices like smartphones and tablets, app tracking has become a cause for concern. In order to reduce the amount of surveillance done on users by apps, tech giant Apple has begun cracking down on app tracking. In 2021, the tech giant introduced the App Tracking Transparency feature in iOS 14.5. This feature is meant to act as a shield for iOS users. It stops developers from tracking users across websites and other apps. When a user rejects tracking, it gets harder to collect data on users to create user profiles that can identify their interests for tailored advertisements. This consumer-focused update by Apple has been costing big digital corporations such as YouTube and Facebook billions in revenue.

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Google Ads to be Banned in Russia over “Fake News” Charges

Google Ads logo
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

On Thursday, the Russian state communications watchdog stated that it will be banning tech giant Google from advertising its services in the country. The charges levied against Google involve its subsidiary video sharing platform, YouTube. YouTube has allegedly been spreading “fake news” regarding Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine. The Russian government has been blocking access to non-state media and information resources. Google services and ads will likely face the ban next.

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Google Play Protect Warns Users to Uninstall the Vanced Manager App

Pictured, Vanced app logo. Google Play Protect Warns Users to Uninstall the Vanced Manager App.
Image Source: WikiMedia Commons

Tech giant Google had only recently taken legal action to remove YouTube Vanced app. The YouTube mod allowed users to access features reserved for YouTube Premium without paying for them. The Vanced Manager app had a large userbase. Now that Google has successfully stopped its development, the tech giant appears to be going after ways to download it. Google Play Protect has begun flagging the Vanced Manager app as harmful. It has been sending users prompts to uninstall it.

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Immersive Autoplay Mode on Mobile Home Feed Tested by YouTube

Pictured, illustration of YouTube icon on mobile, tablet, and lapop. YouTube is testing out Immersive Autoplay.

YouTube‘s latest UI tests on mobile have been making even more adjustments to the autoplay “Playback in feed” feature. This is presumably to make the autoplay feature more immersive. The latest changes to the UI involves changes to the the autoplay feature. It has added new in-feed controls for the volume and closed captions. Besides, it has the ability to tag a video as “Watch later” or to just skip it completely. Shortly after a video starts to autoplay, the immersive autoplay feature can do this while dimming the rest of the YouTube home feed interface. Users can access these controls by tapping the three-dot expanded menu option. Users can find this option along with the video title, channel icon, and view count.

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