YouTube removes 8m videos amid child safety fears

YOUTUBE has removed almost eight million videos in three months, including thousands that could be damaging to children.

The Google-owned service revealed 279,550 clips were taken down in September alone over concerns relating to ‘child safety’.

Most other removed videos were reported as spam for having fake or misleading content.

It comes after Twitter revealed earlier this week that in the first half of this year it had taken down nearly half a million accounts featuring child sexual exploitation, and another 205,000 promoting extremism.

But Google boss Sundar Pichai admitted there was ‘more work to be done’ and YouTube said in a ‘transparency report’ that it was working hard to maintain a ‘safe and vibrant’ community.

The figures reveal the constant effort required to police the site, which is often used by those promoting hate speech, terrorism and child abuse.

Between July and September, 1.67million channels – featuring collections of videos – were taken down. In September – the only month for which a detailed breakdown was given – 73,974 channels were taken down because they featured adult sexual content and 26,529 over child safety concerns.

Increasing numbers of children are watching online videos instead of TV. Earlier this year, the industry watchdog Ofcom said young people were more familiar with the YouTube brand than they were with the BBC.

Comments posted under YouTube videos are also used to spread misinformation and hate, and the report reveals 224million of these were removed between July and September.

Of the 7.8million videos that were taken down, 6.4million were found through YouTube’s automated systems.

Some 878,000 were deemed inappropriate by ‘trusted flaggers’, people approved to review content on the site. Half a million were reported because users stumbled upon them.

When a video was flagged automatically, YouTube often managed to take it down before it had any views.

A total of 10.6million videos flagged by humans between July and September were for sexual content and 2.4million because of child safety concerns.

A video could be flagged several times, meaning the figures do not reflect the number of harmful clips posted.

The report said YouTube had focused on clamping down on child safety violations and extremism in recent months.

In September, 10,394 videos were removed for depicting or promoting violent extremism.

YouTube said: ‘Looking specifically at the most egregious, but low-volume areas, like violent extremism and child safety, our significant investment in fighting this type of content is having an impact.

‘Well over 90 per cent of the videos uploaded in September 2018 and removed for violent extremism or child safety had fewer than ten views.’

‘It’s having an impact’