India tops YouTube video takedown list with over 2.2 mn videos removed in Oct-Dec

New Delhi: YouTube removed over 2.25 million videos in India between October and December 2023 for the violation of its community guidelines, with the country topping the list of video takedowns ahead of nations like the US and Russia.

Singapore with 1,243,871 video takedowns ranked second on that list and the United States (788,354) was placed third, according to YouTube's data on video removals by the country/region of upload.

Indonesia ranked fourth (770,157), while for Russia the number of video takedowns stood at 516,629, as per YouTube’s Community Guidelines Enforcement report that provides global data on the flags YouTube receives and how the Google-owned platform enforces policies.

Globally, during the period (Q4 2023) YouTube removed over 9 million videos for falling foul of its community norms. More than 96 per cent of these videos were first flagged by machines rather than humans.

The videos were removed for violating community norms on parameters like harmful or dangerous content, child safety, violent or graphic content, nudity and sexual content, misinformation and others.

The latest report showed that between October and December 2023, over 2.25 million videos (2,254,902) were removed in India for violating YouTube’s community guidelines. India topped the list of 30 countries in video removals.

Globally, 20.5 million (20,592,341) channels were removed by YouTube for violating its community guidelines during the quarter ended in December 2023.

The report explained that when a channel is terminated, all of its videos are removed. The number of such videos removed during this time period due to a channel-level termination stood at 95.5 million (95,534,236).

"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 our guidelines (as is often the case with spam accounts)," YouTube said.

The Google-owned video streaming platform said it works hard to maintain a safe and vibrant community.

"We have Community Guidelines that set the rules of the road for what we don’t allow on YouTube," it said.

For instance, it does not allow pornography, incitement to violence, harassment, or hate speech. YouTube said it relies on a combination of people and technology to flag inappropriate content and enforce these guidelines. Flags can come from automated flagging systems, from members of the Priority Flagger program, or from users in the broader YouTube community.