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They already lowered bitrates for non premium members.

Proof? The news I recently saw, if you're referring to that, actually said they'd offer a higher-bitrate 1080p option for YouTube Premium, not that they'd lock the (then) current bitrate behind YouTube Premium and downgrade everyone else.

Edit: I did some searching. In addition to that, the only relevant news I could find were about Google testing locking the 4K (2160p) resolution behind the Premium doors, which they ceased doing.

I was speaking from anectodal evidence because I've been feeling my 1080p streams look worse than before the new option showed up.

But it seems I'm mistaken [1].

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/23/23612647/youtube-1080p-pr...

They did lower the bitrate back in 2020, IIRC, because there was so much more youtube being watched all of a sudden and they didn't want ISPs to be crippled under the weight. Don't know if they reverted that change since.

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