YouTube

YouTube
Typewebsite
ShortcutWP:RSPYT
StatusGenerally unreliable Generally unreliable
Deprecatedno
Blacklistedno
Recency2026
Domain youtube.com
In source code

External links in articles

Spamcheck tool


Summary

Most videos on YouTube are anonymous, self-published, and unverifiable, and should not be used as a reference. Content uploaded from a verified official account, such as that of a news organization, may be treated as originating from the uploader and therefore inheriting their level of reliability. However, many YouTube videos from unofficial accounts are copyright violations and should not be linked from Wikipedia, according to WP:COPYLINK. See also WP:YOUTUBE and WP:VIDEOLINK. For illustrative, non-referential use, see c:Commons:YouTube files and Wikipedia:Image use policy.

Excerpt

YouTube is an American online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Steve Chen who were all former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, it is the second-most-visited website in the world, after Google itself. In January 2024, YouTube had reached more than 2.7 billion monthly active users, who collectively watched more than one billion hours of video every day. As of May 2019, videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of video per minute, and as of mid-2024, there were approximately 14.8 billion videos in total.

Discussions


Recency

2026

Rfcs

No Rfcs for this source.

Notes

References

    Original table row for comparison

    (remove this when this source page is ready to go live)

    Perennial sources
    Source Status
    (legend)    		 Discussions Use
    List Last Summary
    YouTube
    WP:RSPYTWP:RSPYT 📌    		 Generally unreliable See also these discussions of YouTube: Discussion in progress

    2026

    		 Most videos on YouTube are anonymous, self-published, and unverifiable, and should not be used as a reference. Content uploaded from a verified official account, such as that of a news organization, may be treated as originating from the uploader and therefore inheriting their level of reliability. However, many YouTube videos from unofficial accounts are copyright violations and should not be linked from Wikipedia, according to WP:COPYLINK. See also WP:YOUTUBE and WP:VIDEOLINK. For illustrative, non-referential use, see c:Commons:YouTube files and Wikipedia:Image use policy. 1 Links Spamcheck