As coronavirus continues to wreak havoc worldwide, while keeping large populations of people at home, many of those people have passed the time by streaming content on the Internet.

But due to a government request, that streaming is going to get a little slower for a while--in Europe, anyway.

The European Union, fearing that massive amounts of streaming were hurting overall Internet quality, asked several tech giants last week to slow their speeds- and it appears that all of them agreed.

According to CNN, European Commissioner Thierry Breton specifically asked executives from Netflix, Google (which owns YouTube) and Amazon to reduce their streaming bitrates, for at least 30 days. Netflix, in particular, is looking to reduce bandwidth consumption by 25 percent, by slightly lowering its image quality.

Apple has also agreed to a similar move for its Apple TV+ service, The Verge reported. Disney has as well for Disney+, which is set to launch in most of Europe Monday, while also agreeing to delay its planned launch in France until April 7.

The companies, Breton said in a statement last week, "all have a joint responsibility to take steps to ensure the smooth functioning of the internet during the battle against the virus propagation."

While it doesn't appear there have been any significant Internet outages in Europe, the measure is seen as a preventative one.

"We support the need for careful management of telecom services to ensure they can handle the increased internet demand, with so many people now at home full-time due to Covid-19," Amazon said in a statement to the media. "Prime Video is working with local authorities and internet service providers were needed to help mitigate any network congestion, including in Europe, where we've already begun the effort to reduce streaming bitrates while maintaining a quality streaming experience for our customers." 

It doesn't appear that the companies are under any pressure from government officials to take similar steps in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world, but Amazon and the other companies have said that they are monitoring the situation.

The New York Times reported last week that both home networks and the underlying infrastructure could find itself taxed once millions of extra people are working from home, and former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said that “we just don’t know” how well the U.S. Internet infrastructure will hold up during the pandemic. Major U.S. Internet providers told the Times that they are "confident" they will hold up under the extra strain.

Stephen Silver is a technology writer for the National Interest.