What you need to know
- YouTube's latest transparency report reveals it removed 5.8 million videos between October and December of 2019.
- A little over 2 million channels were also taken down in the same time frame.
- Out of the videos removed, 108,779 were appealed, but in the end, only 23,471 were reinstated.
A look at YouTube's latest community guidelines report shows that it removed 5,887,021 videos between October and December of 2019. Of the videos removed, nearly 5.3 million of them were removed through automatic flagging, meaning they were removed without any human involvement. In fact, YouTube was able to remove 64.7% of them before they received even a single view.
Videos that featured spam, scams, or misleading content made up the bulk of the removals at 52%, while child safety was the second most popular reason cited at 15.8%. The rest of the top five includes videos removed for nudity or sexual content, violent or graphic videos, and harmful or dangerous content.
The U.S. was number one in removals with a little over 1 million videos taken down, followed by the Netherlands, India, Indonesia, and Brazil.
Unfortunately for creators, videos can sometimes be taken down mistakenly, especially when there is no human overseeing the process. YouTube does provide a way for creators to appeal takedowns, but it is not very effective. Out of the 108,779 videos that were appealed, only 23,471 of them ended up being reinstated.
Along with removing nearly 6 million videos, YouTube also gave a little over 2 million channels the axe. The most commonly cited reason, was again, for spam, scams, or misleading content making up 89.1% of the channels removed. The second most popular reason was for nudity or sexual content, making up 6.8% of the overall removals.
This latest report was the first time YouTube released information on appeals, and shows how the internet juggernaut is attempting to be more transparent with creators. Something it has drawn plenty of criticism for in the past. However, just because YouTube is being more transparent, doesn't mean creators are going to be any happier with the end results. A less than 25% chance of having your video reinstated is not that promising of a stat when your livelihood may rely on YouTube.
