At 1.7 Mn, YouTube Removed The Highest Number Of Videos In India During Jul-Sep 2022

India accounted for the biggest chunk of YouTube videos removed during the quarter ended September 2022, as per tech giant Google’s quarterly transparency report. 

Of the total 5.6 Mn videos delisted on the streaming platform during the period, more than 1.7 Mn videos were removed from India alone. Indonesia was at the second position with 0.62 Mn video removals. 

Google had removed 1.32 Mn videos in India in the preceding June quarter. 

While Google did not give a country-wise breakdown of reasons for video removals, actions were taken for flouting norms related to child safety, violence, nudity, bullying, and harmful content.

Only 8 videos were pulled down by YouTube in response to requests from government agencies across the globe.

Touting its proactive video removals, Google noted that 36.4% of the videos were removed even before acquiring a single view. While 32.1% of the actioned videos had more than 10 views, 31.5% of the videos had between 1-10 views. 

“YouTube strives to prevent content that breaks our rules from being widely viewed—or viewed at all—before it’s removed. Automated flagging enables us to act more quickly and accurately to enforce our policies,” Google said in a statement. 

Elaborating further, the tech giant noted that human detection mechanism comprised largely of users as well as members of YouTube’s ‘Trusted Flagger’ program. The initiative includes stakeholders such as NGOs and government agencies to flag offensive and problematic content.

Around 5.82 Mn channels were also terminated globally during the quarter and all their videos were removed. More than 207.8 Mn videos were removed during the quarter as a result of channel-level suspension.

In addition, Google also banned 737.5 Mn comments on Youtube globally between July and September. Nearly 99% of these comments were flagged automatically, while the rest required human intervention. Most of the actioned comments were removed for being spam, scams, online harassment, or child-safety related. 

Earlier this month, the tech giant reported that it took down 647,177 content pieces in India to prevent dissemination of harmful content, including child sexual abuse and violent extremist content.

It must be noted that the search engine giant is under regulatory scanner in the country for a slew of reasons. In October, Google was fined INR 2,274 Cr by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for abusing its market dominance and anti-competitive behavior. 

Earlier this year, Indian officials pulled up Google executives for not proactively removing ‘fake news’ on its platforms and for not adhering to content takedown orders. 

This also comes on the day when it was reported that the government was considering bringing in light touch regulation for big tech majors to balance innovation and fair play.