Users have been drawn to YouTube and other web 2.0 platforms in the name of community. According to Howard Rheingold, "Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace."[cit]

Censorship on YouTube has been a major concern for its users, scholars, and journalists. The multiple issues raised include YouTube being censored by the governments of specific countries and YouTube itself censoring user content, sometimes, although not always, in the name of stopping copyright infringement, including a long-standing billion-dollar legal battle with Viacom.