YouTube removes 2.9 mn videos in India for violating community guidelines

YouTube today announced that it has removed over 2.9 million videos in India for violating its community guidelines. India led the list of countries with the highest number of video takedowns. Globally, the video platform removed 9.4 million videos.

 

Compared to the same period last year, the number of videos removed in India has increased. In October-December 2023, YouTube removed 2.25 million videos in India.

 

Some of the reasons for the removal of videos were child safety (53.8 per cent), harmful or dangerous content (16 per cent), violent or graphic content (8.9 per cent), and harassment and bullying (7.4 per cent), among others.

 

More than 96 per cent of these videos were first flagged by machines rather than humans, said YouTube.

 

Of the videos detected by machines, 54.9 per cent were removed before they received a single view, about 25.3 per cent received between 1 and 10 views before removal, 9.5 per cent received between 11 and 100 views before removal, and 6.5 per cent received between 101 and 1,000 views before removal.

 

For the same period, YouTube removed 4.8 million channels. When a channel is terminated, all its videos are removed. A YouTube channel is terminated if it accrues three community guidelines strikes in 90 days, has a single case of severe abuse (such as predatory behaviour), or is determined to be wholly dedicated to violating the platform's guidelines (as is often the case with spam accounts).

 

However, the number of channels removed dropped by 76 per cent on a year-on-year basis.

 

When it comes to removing comments, YouTube removed 1.2 billion comments in October-December 2024. Most removed comments are detected by YouTube’s automated flagging systems, but they can also be flagged by human moderators. Almost 99.7 per cent of comments were flagged by automated systems.