YouTube removes almost 2 mn videos in crackdown; shockingly machines flagged 93% of them

YouTube is one of the best online video-sharing platforms for the young, the old, and everything in between. However, there are many bad actors present on the platform and these entities spoil the experience of the common user and even cause harm. Now, in a crackdown, YouTube informs that between January and March 2023, it has removed over 1.9 million videos for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines. This was done as per the YouTube's Community Guidelines Enforcement guidelines.

During the same period, YouTube took action elsewhere too. Here are the highlights of video removal activity globally:

• YouTube removed over 6.48 million videos for violating Community Guidelines.
• More than 93% of these videos were first flagged by machines rather than humans.
• Of the videos detected by machines, 38% were removed before they received a single view, and 31% received between 1 and 10 views before removal.
• This means more than 69% of the violative videos first detected by machines received fewer than 10 views before they were removed from YouTube.
• YouTube removed over 8.7 million channels in Q1 2023 for violating our Community Guidelines. 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.
• YouTube removed more than 853 million comments in Q1 2023, the majority of which were spam. 99+% of removed comments were detected automatically.

YouTube says, over the years, it has invested heavily in the policies and products needed to protect the YouTube users. It says that educational efforts are successful in reducing the number of creators who unintentionally violate our policies. YouTube lets these infringers of rules know they have violated rules by giving a one-time warning for a first policy violation. This provides creators the chance to review what went wrong before facing more penalties. The result has been exceptional as over 80% of creators who receive a warning never violate policies again.

Taking the initiative further, YouTube says it is taking another step that it says will benefit millions of creators and at the same time, preserve the policies and systems that protect the community. Starting today, creators will have the option of taking an educational training course when they receive a Community Guidelines warning. These resources will provide new ways for creators to understand how they can avoid uploading content that violates our policies in the future.