YouTube purged 9 million videos in Q4 2023: Here's why
What's the story
In a sweeping move, global video streaming giant YouTube has axed over nine million videos worldwide in the last quarter of 2023. The purge was a response to violations of the platform's community guidelines, which have been safeguarding the YouTube community from harmful content since its inception. The company assures that these rules are applied uniformly across all regions and users.
India leads
India leads in YouTube video removals
India topped the list with a staggering 2.25 million videos removed, making it the country with the most deletions. Google-owned YouTube stressed that when content is axed from its platform, it's a global action. The detection of policy breaches is a blend of machine learning and human reviewers, ensuring an unbiased and comprehensive process.
ML flags videos
Machine learning models flag majority of removed videos
YouTube disclosed that its machine learning (ML) models initially flagged over 96% of the deleted videos, not humans. More than half were removed before they even garnered their first view. Furthermore, over 27% were axed after receiving between one and 10 views, underscoring the efficiency of YouTube's content monitoring system.
Channels closed
YouTube shuts down over 20 million channels globally
YouTube didn't stop at video removals; it also shut down over 20 million channels globally in Q4 2023 for breaching its community guidelines. Most terminations were due to spam violations like scams, misleading metadata or thumbnails, and video and comment spam. When a channel is shut down, all its videos are purged. During this period, videos removed due to channel-level termination totaled an astounding 95.5 million.
Comments removed
Over 1.1 billion comments were deleted for policy breaches
In addition to videos and channels, YouTube also wiped out more than 1.1 billion comments globally in Q4 2023 for policy breaches. Most of these deleted comments were flagged as spam. The company revealed that a whopping 99% of these comments were identified and flagged automatically, highlighting the effectiveness of their automated content moderation system.