[tzs]

> Ostensibly, it's a feature for your benefit (somehow), and they're doing you a favor by enabling it by default.

Some throttling by default for video actually is sort of for your benefit, at least indirectly, although I don't know if carriers are throttling more than that amount.

A surprisingly large number of people nowadays watch movies on their phones or small tablets. On screens that size at the distances they typically hold them from their eyes 4K and usually 1080p won't offer any visible improvement over 720p. On some devices even 720p probably won't offer an improvement over 480p.

It is to everyone's benefit if other people on the network don't stream at a higher resolution than is necessary to reach the limit of what is visible. Since most people aren't going to change any settings from the default, defaulting to low speed streams maximizes benefits.

[eurleif]

Speak for yourself. 1080p is noticeably worse if I'm paying attention; 720p is noticeably worse at a glance; and 480p (which is effectively T-Mobile's limit by default, even though they advertise my plan as supporting "4K streaming") looks like hot garbage.