Youtube taKes down 58 million videos

WASHINGTON: YouTube took down more than 58 million videos and 224 million comments during the third quarter based on violations of its policies, the unit of Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Thursday in an effort to demonstrate progress in suppressing problem content.

Government officials in the U.S., Europe and Asia have been pressuring YouTube, Facebook and other social media services to quickly identify and remove extremist and hateful content that critics have said incite violence. An official at India’s Ministry of Home Affairs speaking on the condition of anonymity said social media firms had agreed to tackle authorities’ requests to remove objectionable content within 36 hours. As with past quarters, most of the removed content was spam, YouTube said. Automated detection tools help YouTube quickly identify spam, extremist content and nudity. During September, 90% of the nearly 10,400 videos removed for violent extremism or 279,600 videos removed for child safety issues received fewer than 10 views, according to YouTube. Automated detection technologies for those policies are relatively new and less efficient, so YouTube relies on users to report potentially problematic videos or comments. This means that the content may be viewed widely before being removed. The third-quarter removal data for the first time revealed the number of YouTube accounts Google disabled for either having three policy violations in 90 days or committing what the company found to be an egregious violation, such as uploading child pornography.