YouTube removes 9 million videos worldwide, 2.2mn in India alone, for policy violations

Google-owned video streaming platform YouTube said Tuesday (Mar 26) it removed 2.25 million videos in India during the fourth quarter of 2023 (October-December). The videos were removed over non-compliance of its community guidelines. During the same period, YouTube removed over nine million videos worldwide. The video platform in a statement said its actions helped users stay away from harmful content.

"Since the earliest days as a company, our Community Guidelines have protected the YouTube community from harmful content," the company said in a statement. "YouTube’s Community Guidelines are enforced consistently across the globe, regardless of the uploader, where the content is uploaded or how the content was generated," it added.

The statement added that when content is removed from YouTube, it’s removed globally. It added that policy violations are identified using a combination of machine learning and human reviewers.

Role of machine and AI

It added that more than 96 per cent of the now-removed videos globally were initially flagged by machines rather than humans. It also claimed that above 53 per cent of those videos were removed even before they received the first view and over 27 per cent of the videos were removed between one and 10 views.

"YouTube removed over 20 million channels in Q4 2023 for violating our Community Guidelines (globally)," YouTube said in its statement. "The overwhelming majority of these channels were terminated for violating our spam policies, including but not restricted to scams, misleading metadata or thumbnails, video and comments spam," it added.

YouTube also removed more than 1.1 billion comments during the quarter worldwide for policy violations. The majority of the removed comments were spam, YouTube said. It added that 99 per cent of the now-deleted comments were flagged automatically.

Other nations where most videos were removed

After India, Singapore and the US ranked second and third respectively for most video removals by YouTube. A whopping 1.24 million videos were removed in Singapore while above 780,000 videos were removed in the US.

Indonesia came in fourth place where more than 770,000 videos were removed. The videos were removed for violating community norms on parameters like harmful or dangerous content, child safety, violent or graphic content, nudity and sexual content, misinformation and others.

(With inputs from agencies)