BOTS DESTROY SICK VIDS IN PURGE

Millions of nasty clips wiped out

INTERNET giant YouTube has taken down eight million sick, violent and extremist clips in a matter of a few weeks.

The videos, including images of child abuse and brutal fanaticism, were detected by the hi-tech firm’s bots.

They were then removed, often automatically, in seconds.

The company, which is owned by Google, has been aiming to get dodgy videos off its website before they have been seen by anyone.

But the former head of counter terrorism police said that social media giants only improved efforts to remove sick content following a public outcry and a drop in advertising.

Sir Mark Rowley said: “In nearly four years leading police counterterrorism efforts, I saw zero proactive reports of suspicious behaviour to us by any of these companies. This is irresponsible.”

Gruesome

And he added: “When a social media firm finds someone sharing the most gruesome terrorism material or bomb-making instructions and then cancels their account, they do not tell the police.

“This makes the work of police and

MI5 more difficult and endangers the public’s safety.”

YouTube said it wants to make sure the website remains a “vibrant community” which is why it has started removing the videos using a mix of content experts and computer bots.

A spokesman said: “We are committed to tackling the challenge of quickly removing content that violates our guidelines.”

But no mention has been made of passing on information to law enforcement agencies.

Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi watched a video on YouTube before he assembled his device that killed 22 people and injured another

139 last year.

As well as removing 7.8m videos from July to September this year, the video hosting site also removed

224m comments that breached its terms of service.

The Star Says: Page 6