They do that to save bandwidth and money. It’s not your bandwidth they are trying to save, it’s theirs because streaming so many videos to so many people costs money. So they are trying to be sneaky and use lower quality settings as often as possible to reduce cost.
Sometimes YouTube will bump you down to like 720p while still showing the quality as 1080p
I’m on gigabit fibre, so not sure why they would do that.I have noticed that though.
What I’ve noticed is the resolution isn’t necessarily lower, but the amount of detail and texture is lower
They do that to save bandwidth and money. It’s not your bandwidth they are trying to save, it’s theirs because streaming so many videos to so many people costs money. So they are trying to be sneaky and use lower quality settings as often as possible to reduce cost.