Youtube deletes more videos than ever before

In the same period a year ago, the number of videos deleted for violating YouTube's community guidelines was still just under nine million worldwide.

Child protection, unwanted advertising and fraudulent content

In 3.8 million cases (33.5 percent), violations of child protection were the reason for deletion. 3.2 million videos (28.3 percent) were identified as unwanted advertising (spam) or as fraudulent or misleading content. In 1.7 million videos (14.6 percent), Youtube objected to unauthorized nudity or sexual content. Hateful content or insults led to deletion in only 80,033 cases (0.7 percent).

Algorithm supports process

Google employees receive support from a computer program when identifying and removing prohibited content. 95 percent of the videos that YouTube removed in the past quarter were identified by the algorithm and only then checked by employees, according to the blog entry. Forty-two percent of the machine-detected videos were deleted before they were viewed even once, according to the report. 33.7 percent were only viewed up to ten times.

Most of the videos that Youtube deleted for violating its policies came from users in the U.S. (1.02 million), followed by India (827,000) and Brazil (485,000).

Youtube regularly presents the statistics for deleting videos. The Google video platform and other online companies are repeatedly accused of not removing extremist content quickly enough. However, Youtube also has to deal with accusations of deleting too much content. For example, members of the right-wing Alt-Right movement in the U.S. or the Identitarian movement in Germany and Austria complained when individual videos or entire channels disappeared from Youtube. (SDA/swi)