YouTube removed 7.8 million videos and 224 million comments in Q3 2018

Martin Brinkmann
Dec 14, 2018
Music and Video, Youtube
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39

Google owned YouTube published the YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement report for the third quarter of 2018 yesterday.

The report highlights that YouTube removed 7.8 million videos, 224 million comments, and 1.6 million channels in the quarter alone based on policy violations.

The majority of videos and comments that were removed by YouTube were removed automatically. YouTube's automatic routines removed 6.3 million videos and 223 million comments from the site; the remaining 1.5 million videos and 1 million comments were reported to YouTube in one way or another.

youtube removed videos q3 2018

Government agencies and NGO requests led to the removal of 34,000 videos; 547,000 were removed after YouTube users reported them, and 878,000 were flagged by members of YouTube's Trusted Flagger program.

74.5% of all videos flagged by YouTube's automated system were not viewed by any user on the site, and "well over" 90% of videos uploaded in September 2018 that were removed for Violent Extremism or Child Safety had fewer than 10 views according to YouTube.

Spam is the number one reason why videos get removed; about 72% of all videos were removed because they were flagged as misleading, scam, or spam. Child Safety, nudity or sexual, and violent or graphic make up 23% of reasons.

YouTube channels get strikes when they violate against policies. YouTube terminates channels if they accrue three Community Guidelines strikes in 90 days or have a "single case of severe abuse", or is "determined to be wholly dedicated to violating" guidelines.

All videos published by a terminated channel are removed from YouTube. YouTube removed 1.6 million channels in the third quarter of 2018 and that led to the removal of 50.2 million videos published by these channels in the quarter.

Spam is the number one reason for the removal; 79% of all channels are removed because they are flagged as spam, misleading, or scams. Nudity or sexual violations follow with 12.6% of all removals.

YouTube removed 224 million comments in the third quarter of 2018. 99.5% of all comments were removed automatically, only 0.5% after humans flagged the comments.

The countries with the most human flagging contributions are India, United States, Brazil, United Kingdom and Mexico.

YouTube has been under heavy pressure all over the world to identify and remove certain types of content quickly. Google did not reveal how many false positives its systems detected.

Now You: What is your take on this?

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YouTube removed 7.8 million videos and 224 million comments in Q3 2018
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YouTube removed 7.8 million videos and 224 million comments in Q3 2018
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Google owned YouTube published the YouTube Community Guidelines Enforcement report for the third quarter of 2018 yesterday.
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Comments

  1. coakl said on December 17, 2018 at 8:02 pm
    Reply

    It’s a tweaked version of the censorship auto-filter that Google developed for its China search engine.

    Oh well. Also, Youtube isn’t allowing me to skip commercials anymore.
    So I’m taking a ‘Youtube vacation’…turned it off, went to the library, and found some interesting books to read.

  2. Tree said on December 16, 2018 at 9:34 pm
    Reply

    I wonder how YouTube tracks me if I don’t connect on my PC. Only watch on my Tivo. Does Gurgle know it is the same person? I don’t trust them or FaceBUTT either.

  3. ULBoom said on December 15, 2018 at 4:07 am
    Reply

    They do that but the home page is almost completely crap.

    My channel which has a few dozen vids of stuff most people couldn’t care less about is absolutely swamped with videos I’d never, ever watch. Swamped to the point that the channel controls are very difficult to find.

    Google sent me an email recently promoting me to a Content Creator. Duh! Everyone with one vid on you tube is one too! I sent their auspicious award to my gmail spam box. Fools!

    Google, facebook, MS, apple, none of them have a clue what their botware is doing until after it’s done. Even then, they can’t say for certain. Maybe they’ll mutually delete each other; it’s a possible outcome!

  4. Anonymous said on December 15, 2018 at 3:27 am
    Reply

    There is no free speech on US social media. Most of those “YouTube users” reporting videos are employees of governments, political parties, law enforcement agencies, and various corporations (including Google itself). They are censoring videos and shutting down accounts that reveal damaging info.

    1. Klaas Vaak said on December 15, 2018 at 12:17 pm
      Reply

      @Anonymous: +1

  5. Anonymous said on December 14, 2018 at 3:33 pm
    Reply

    You’re allowed to call this censorship only when China does it, not when Google does it, otherwise you’re a Violent Extremist.

    1. Klaas Vaak said on December 15, 2018 at 12:16 pm
      Reply

      @Anonymous: +1

  6. Anonymous said on December 14, 2018 at 1:48 pm
    Reply

    Spam = Off topic / irrelevant comments usually with an attempt to sell something.

    These days merely having a difference of opinion = Spam.

    Too many people don’t like having their personal viewpoints challenged and they all know Google will shadow ban first and check later (if at all). Very effective censorship against differing opinions.

    1. Clairvaux said on December 14, 2018 at 2:46 pm
      Reply

      Sorry, I still don’t understand. I’m only a casual You Tube user, just watching. I don’t publish and I don’t comment.

      How can a You Tube video be off topic ? If I publish a video, I’m the one who chooses the topic, am I not ? As for selling, is it not perfectly compliant with You Tube rules to publish commercial videos ? Many businesses publish marketing videos on You Tube.

      I’m sure many videos get nixed for wrong reasons, but at least the pretext offered must hold water. I don’t understand this “spam” category — and it’s the largest.

      1. Jason Arthur Taylor said on December 17, 2018 at 7:50 pm
        Reply

        Clairvaux, Anonymous’ off topic explanation of spam was regarding comments, not videos. Anonymous was incorrect to assume your question was about comments. It was actually just about videos.

        Youtube merges categories to help allow an illusion of justice. If they are censoring to prevent spread of certain information, like that they get censorship guidelines from the CIA, is looks better for them to say “79% of all channels are removed because they are flagged as spam, misleading, or scams” instead of something like “75% were removed because we declared them to be misleading according to what our researchers in our Ministry of Truth and Facts have proclaimed is true and 2% were scams and 2% were spam.”

  7. Clairvaux said on December 14, 2018 at 1:04 pm
    Reply

    What is exactly a spam video ? Real question.

    1. Jason Arthur Taylor said on December 15, 2018 at 6:09 pm
      Reply

      Whatever their people claim is spam. Generally, that’s a video they don’t want the slaves to see. To give an impression of legitimacy, they will make dang sure their cherry picked-spam-labelled videos reek of whatever people currently think “spam” is. They have their special agents create and upload these bonafide spam videos.

    2. ULBoom said on December 15, 2018 at 3:57 am
      Reply

      Some vids have very little or nothing to do with the title, a type of clickbait; the vid itself mentions and links all kinds of other sites, products, garbage.

      Many celebrity scandal videos are like that “Blah Blah did a really bad thing!” “Oh and by the way…(10 minutes of completely unrelated junk)” Ending with “Thanks for watching! For more vids like this one, go to…(Hell as far as I’m concerned)”

      Vids with thumbnails of dogs the size of a house, airplanes with 10 layers of wings, cruise ships the size of a small country; none of which appear in the vid although the title matches the thumbnail. Inside, you get non-stop ads and links to other spam channels.

      1. Clairvaux said on December 15, 2018 at 5:52 pm
        Reply

        Thanks, ULBoom. You spared me the need to check those airplane videos.

      2. Martin dA said on January 27, 2021 at 12:05 am
        Reply

        Loved that deceleration argument. Kudos to you, well earned.

  8. tjommie said on December 14, 2018 at 11:32 am
    Reply

    Youtube has become what old cable tv is, boring fluff with tons of comercials.
    What the next thing will be is not promising, those companies are run by extreme lefty sjw’s

    1. Anonymous said on December 14, 2018 at 3:44 pm
      Reply

      Sigh… Billionaires doing bad things for profit are called “extreme lefty social justice warriors”. On what Youtube channel did you hear that garbage ?

      1. veritas said on December 16, 2018 at 7:15 am
        Reply

        Conservative Facebook Employee Who Wrote Memo On “Intolerant” Liberals Quits

        Engineer Brian Amerige sent an internal message to co-workers on Wednesday, writing:

        “These problems can be solved — just not by me, not any more, at least. I care too deeply about our role in supporting free expression and intellectual diversity to even whole-heartedly attempt the product stuff anymore, and that’s how I know it’s time to go.”

        “I’m leaving because I’m burnt out on Facebook, our strategy, our culture, and our product. Strategically, we’ve taken a stance on how to balance offensive and hateful speech with free expression. We’ve accepted the inevitability of government regulation. And we’ve refused to defend ourselves in the press. Our policy strategy is pragmatism — not clear, implementable long-term principles — and our PR strategy is appeasement — not morally earned pride and self-defense.”

        Your ad hominem is the “garbage” here.

        Next time, come with facts.

        Thanks again to the admin for supporting the 1st amendment.

      2. Clairvaux said on December 16, 2018 at 7:24 am
        Reply

        The admin can’t be supporting the 1st amendment of the constitution of the US of A in a legal sort of way, since he’s a German publishing a blog out of Germany. But he can support freedom of speech by his own volition.

        Not all Internet users are in America… not all English-speaking sites are American.

      3. veritas said on December 16, 2018 at 12:34 pm
        Reply

        “legal sort of way” you’re quite the lawyer.
        FYI a German (or person of any nationality) can be in support of the first amendment just as he could support the deceleration of Independence.

        Being in support of does not mean having to be a citizen of the respective country; To be in benefit of, does.
        I’m in support of Brexit, and I’m not a European. Though my county is a member of the E.U.
        ;)
        I was not aware he was German though. And yes, it’s good he supports free speech, which seems to be the meaning of your reply.

      4. Clairvaux said on December 16, 2018 at 5:34 pm
        Reply

        @ Veritas
        “You’re quite the lawyer”

        You’re quite the smart-ass.

        No, I don’t think that anyone can support the “deceleration of Independence”.

      5. veritas said on December 17, 2018 at 6:35 am
        Reply

        You fail at logical discussion. You do not refute my point, but name call instead.
        If you can communicate without attacks and logical fallacy, I will continue a discussion with you.
        I don’t waste my time with those incapable of these simple things.
        As i said, far too many fools to waste time with. I encourage you to educate your self as-to the rules of logical discussion and debate.

      6. Clairvaux said on December 17, 2018 at 6:50 am
        Reply

        @ Veritas

        “The deceleration of Independence” ? Again ? And you’re accusing people of being “low-IQ ?” You accuse people of being “low-IQ”, and “quite the lawyer”, and then you pretend to dislike “ad-hominems” ? It seems to me you can dish it out, but you can’t stand the heat.

        What makes you think anyone would want to entertain a discussion with you, anyway? You’d need to be a little bit more than a bot spouting buzzwords, in order to be able to hold a discussion at all.

      7. veritas said on December 17, 2018 at 8:56 am
        Reply

        You are very good at proving my points.
        good day.

      8. veritas said on December 17, 2018 at 2:56 am
        Reply

        *laugh* more ad hominem from low IQ people, I’m not surprised.

        I could of called your reply “snarky” but i don’t reduce my self to attacks which violate intellectual debate or argue with people with low IQ.

        LOL. I think only the some British and most communists, fascists and socialists don’t support the deceleration of Independence, that would be my opinion, though.

        *tips hat* enjoy your convolution. I will not be wasting time further with “idiocy”, far too many fools who don’t have a clue about logical debate, to waste time arguing/name calling with.

      9. Klaas Vaak said on December 16, 2018 at 9:59 am
        Reply

        @Clairvaux: +1

  9. Patrick said on December 14, 2018 at 10:45 am
    Reply

    I told you, Google & Facebook are iron fists of banksters and the New World Order.

    And yes, their tracking is absolutely insane.

  10. RossN said on December 14, 2018 at 9:26 am
    Reply

    Youtube removes content and channels that have a strong conservative viewpoint.
    They along with Facebook and Twitter are the new gestapo.

    1. Tseries said on December 14, 2018 at 2:29 pm
      Reply

      Subscribe to Pewdiepie!!!

    2. Cor said on December 14, 2018 at 2:20 pm
      Reply

      Remembering the #thotaudit from about a week ago it appears many of the not-so-mainstream community is able to become just as jealous and vile as any social justice flagging mob.

      Comparing above numbers to YouTube’s average usage, and seeing how other mainstream platforms handle their restrictions, I think YouTube’s still a great place to be.

      1. veritas said on December 16, 2018 at 7:03 am
        Reply

        Muh thots!
        You forgot to mention: breaking laws by not paying tax’s.

        it appears what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

        BTW: income tax is a direct tax, which by constitutional law: must be equally apportioned to the people, something the gov. does not do.

        Thanks again to the admin for supporting free speech.

      2. Jason Arthur Taylor said on December 16, 2018 at 3:53 pm
        Reply

        “income tax is a direct tax, which by constitutional law: must be equally apportioned to the people, something the gov. does not do.”

        In the USA, the 16th amendment grants non-apportioned taxation based upon anything. (They could tax black people one rate and white another with it.) Needless to say, it wasn’t easy getting the votes to pass this, since anyone who voted for it might not get reelected. Some claim it wasn’t ratified correctly, and there certainly seems to be some oddities supporting that claim. However, from a legal perspective, it is precedent binding all but the Supreme court, so it is a moot point from a practical perspective and a cute way to put the out of boxers into jail (i.e. a honeytrap).

      3. veritas said on December 17, 2018 at 8:18 am
        Reply

        Correction: IRS whistle blower: Joseph R. Banister commonly known as Joe Banister
        Another courageous IRS whistle blower is: Jennifer Long
        “The IRS selectively audited taxpayers who were poor and vulnerable.
        They routinely fabricated evidence against tax payers.
        They encouraged agents to ‘stick it’ to tax payers”

        Another interesting fact: The CIA had a 1 trillion dollar bungle of missing money, this was announced by Donald Rumsfeld one day before 9/11 and was “buried” by the event, never to be investigated.

      4. veritas said on December 17, 2018 at 7:22 am
        Reply

        In addendum: take a look at the works of Ex-IRS whistle blowers:
        John Bannister and Sherry Jackson

        The supreme court ruled in: Stanton Vs Baltic mining 240 U.S. 103 (1916):
        “The provisions of 16th amendment conferred no new power of taxation”
        -All lower courts must be in compliance with the supreme court.-

        And yes, if you are willing you challenge this corruption: You might end up like Irwin Schiff. Because: we no longer have constitutional courts. We have UCC: Uniform Commercial Code courts. Symbolized by the gold fringe on the American flag in any court. So tread wisely.

        To call this a honeypot is ad hominem logical fallacy. It would appear the only moot point:
        is your own.
        (ad hominem and strawman failures of logic everywhere *sigh*)

        Thanks again to Martin Brinkmann for upholding the ideals of free speech, so these matters can be discussed.

      5. veritas said on December 17, 2018 at 3:00 am
        Reply

        Please reference specific paragraphs and sentences of referenced Constitution and 16th amendment their of, to begin to validate and add substance to your un-substantiated argument.

    3. Muchacho said on December 14, 2018 at 11:34 am
      Reply

      Someone misses Alex Jones…

      1. veritas said on December 16, 2018 at 6:53 am
        Reply

        Strawman much? he didn’t say a word about AJ.

        + to this site though, appears to uphold 1st amendment.

      2. John Fenderson said on December 14, 2018 at 5:56 pm
        Reply

        Lol! Indeed.

  11. Klaas Vaak said on December 14, 2018 at 9:17 am
    Reply

    Google has effectively become the government’s proxy censor in a number of countries. Spam is a very flexible term that can include a lot.

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