Over 1.9 million videos were removed between January and March 2023 in India for violating YouTube's community guidelines, marking the highest removals among nations, according to a report released by the popular video streaming platform.

During the same period, globally, YouTube removed over 6.48 million videos for violating community guidelines.

The Community Guidelines Enforcement report provides global data on the flags YouTube receives and how YouTube enforces policies.

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Between January and March 2023, in India, over 1.9 million videos were removed for violating YouTube's Community Guidelines. In comparison, in the US, 6,54,968 videos were removed, Russia (4,91,933), and Brazil (4,49,759).

Guidelines to protect YouTube community

"Since the earliest days as a company, our Community Guidelines have protected the YouTube community from harmful content. We enforce our policies using a combination of machine learning and human reviewers," YouTube said.

Over the years, YouTube said, it has invested heavily in the policies and products needed to protect the community.

Today, the vast majority of creators upload content in good faith and don’t violate policies, it said adding "we believe educational efforts are successful at reducing the number of creators who unintentionally violate our policies".

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93 per cent of videos flagged by machines

Citing the findings of the `Community Guidelines Enforcement report' on the video removals, it said more than 93 per cent of these videos were first flagged by machines rather than humans.

"Of the videos detected by machines, 38 per cent were removed before they received a single view, and 31 per cent received between 1 and 10 views before removal," it said.

This means more than 69 per cent of the violative videos first detected by machines received fewer than 10 views before they were removed from YouTube.

YouTube removed over 8.7 million channels in Q1 2023 for violating community guidelines.

Violation of spam policies

"The overwhelming majority of these channels were terminated for violating our spam policies, including but not restricted to scams, misleading metadata or thumbnails, video and comments spam," it said.

YouTube removed more than 853 million comments in Q1 2023, the majority of which were spam. About 99 per cent of removed comments were detected automatically.

YouTube said starting today, creators will have the option of taking an educational training course when they receive a Community Guidelines warning.

These resources will provide new ways for creators to understand how they can avoid uploading content that violates our policies in the future.

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