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Reminds me of how YouTube's website doesn't let you full screen in Safari on the iPad but every other HTML 5 video is able to. And how YouTube throws a fit if you try and background it so that you'll buy "YouTube Red".

Somebody at YouTube has a hate on for iOS in general.

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Background playback is a problem for YouTube because they pay for music licensing through ad revenue. I'm sure advertisers wouldn't be happy with people not seeing the ad they are paying for. With YouTube Red they have another revenue stream to pay for the music licensing. That's my theory, anyway.

Does YouTube actually pay for music licensing though? It's users are the ones that upload the music, afaik all YouTube is responsible for is responding to takedown requests

They are paying for music licensing. In Germany about 60℅ of the top 1000 videos were blocked due to disagreements with GEMA about fees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_YouTube_videos_in_...

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