YouTube removes over 2.2 million videos in India over community norm violation in October-December

New Delhi, March 26

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 12,43,871 video takedowns ranked second on that list and the United States (7,88,354) was placed third, according to YouTube’s data on video removals by the country/region of upload.

Indonesia ranked fourth (7,70,157), while for Russia the number of video takedowns stood at 5,16,629, 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, 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 over 2.25 million videos (22,54,902) were removed in India for violating YouTube’s community guidelines. India topped the list of 30 countries in video removals.

Globally, 20.5 million (2,05,92,341) channels were removed by YouTube for violating its community guidelines.

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 (9,55,34,236).

“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.