YouTube removed 1.7 mn videos in India in July-Sept, most in world

Around 5.6 million videos were removed globally for violating platform's community guidelines

YouTube in July-September this year removed some 1.7 million videos originating in India--the highest in the world--for violating guidelines, the company said in its quarterly transparency report on Tuesday.

It had removed 1.32 million videos in India in the previous quarter, April to June. Around 5.6 million videos were removed globally, mainly for violations related to child safety, violence, nudity, bullying, and harmful content.

The Google-owned company cancelled more than 5 million channels worldwide in the third quarter of 2022, for violating its policies on misleading metadata, thumbnails, scams, video, and spam comments.

India, where 1,707,204 videos were removed July to September, was followed by Indonesia, which had 628,539 videos nixed. 

YouTube’s Community Guidelines are enforced across the globe, regardless of where the content is uploaded. Content removed for violating guidelines becomes unavailable globally, said the company.

Over 94 per cent of the video takedowns were initiated through the automated flagging systems deployed by the video streaming platform. As much as 68 per cent of the removed videos were removed before getting 10 views.

“We enforce our policies using a combination of machine learning and human reviewers. In addition to our automated flagging systems, Trusted Flaggers and our broader community of users play an important role in flagging content,” the company said.

Only 8 YouTube videos removed globally were flagged by government agencies, said the report. Data about a video is based on the up-loader’s IP address, which usually corresponds with where an uploader is located, unless they are using a virtual private network (VPN) or proxy server.

The video-sharing platform removed around 737.5 million comments using a combination of people and technology. The data does not include comments removed when the comment section was disabled on a video. It also does not include comments taken down when a video itself was removed (individually or through a channel-level suspension), when a commenter’s account is terminated, or when a user chooses to remove certain comments or hold them for review.