(credit: Aurich Lawson)

T-Mobile USA’s recently instituted practice of downgrading video quality to 480p in order to reduce data usage now has a prominent critic: YouTube.

“Reducing data charges can be good for users, but it doesn’t justify throttling all video services, especially without explicit user consent,” a YouTube spokesperson said, according to a Wall Street Journal article today.

T-Mobile’s “Binge On” program automatically reduces the quality of video while allowing many video services to stream without counting against customers’ high-speed data limits. Video services that cooperate with T-Mobile by meeting the company’s “technical criteria” have their videos exempted from customers’ data caps. Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and many others worked with T-Mobile to get the exemption.