YouTube takes down 1.9 mn videos in India for rule violations

New Delhi: Google-owned YouTube has removed more than 1.9 million videos from its platform in India between January and March 2023, due to breaches of 'YouTube's Community Guidelines'.

Globally, the video-sharing platform took down more than 6.48 million videos due to violations of its rules.

During the same time frame, the company also removed more than 8.7 million channels that had violated YouTube's spam policies. These violations included activities such as scams, employment of deceptive metadata or thumbnails, as well as video and comment spam.

It also took down over 853 million comments, of which the majority were spam. Over 99 per cent of removed comments were detected automatically.

"Over the years, we’ve invested heavily in the policies and products needed to protect the YouTube community. Today, the vast majority of creators upload content in good faith and don’t violate our policies and we believe educational efforts are successful at reducing the number of creators who unintentionally violate our policies," YouTube said on Wednesday.

According to the company, more than 93 per cent of the videos that YouTube removed were first flagged by machines rather than humans.

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Of the videos detected by machines, 38 per cent were removed before they received a single view, and 31 per cent received between one and 10 views before removal, meaning over 69 per cent of the violative videos first detected by machines received fewer than 10 views before they were removed from YouTube.

In 2019, YouTube started giving a one-time warning for a first policy violation which gave creators the chance to review what went wrong before facing more penalties.

As a result, over 80 per cent of creators who receive a warning now never violate the company's policies again.

Moreover, to preserve the policies and systems that protect the YouTube community, the company has introduced an 'educational training course' for creators.

"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," YouTube said.

With agency inputs

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