YouTube deleted 4 million videos at the end of 2021, largely thanks to AI

The platform Youtube
has just updated its transparency report, which reports, for the last quarter of 2021, millions of channels and videos deleted, the majority due to automatic detection.

YouTube’s little hands and algorithms (well, mostly algorithms) have been busy over the past year. In the last quarter of 2021, the Google subsidiary deleted some 3.75 million videos automatically detected or reported for non-compliance with the community guidelines. In total, over the whole year, YouTube deleted nearly 26 million videos in this way.

A large majority of videos deleted before generating more than 10 views

Of those 3.75 million videos deleted in the last quarter, 3.45 million (around 92%) were removed using artificial intelligence technologies that enable automatic detection. 232,737 videos were deleted following a manual report from users of the platform. It should also be noted that 10,531 videos reported by NGOs were deleted, and 16 were mentioned by a government agency.

Automatic detection is important in the removal process. 30.7% of videos were removed before generating any views. 38% got between 1 and 10 views before being deleted, and 30.4% were deleted after making more than 10 views, YouTube tells us.

Regarding the reason for deletion, you must in any case have violated the YouTube Community Guidelines. 31.5% of videos (approximately 1.2 million) were deleted for having violated the safety of children in the last quarter, 19.9% ​​for violent and explicit content and 18.4% for nudity or character content sexual. More than 9% of deleted videos contained potentially spammy or confusing, scam-prone content, while 322,627 videos were taken down (8.6%) for harassment and cyberbullying.

But also millions of closed channels

It should be noted that, with regard to videos deleted after reporting or automatic detection, it is India (1.2 million), the United States (319,813) and Indonesia (260,641) which climb on the podium. . Brazil and Russia follow to complete the top 5. France is in 21^and rank, with 31,815 videos removed. 1.26 billion comments were also deleted between the beginning of October and the end of December on YouTube.

On the one hand, there are those videos deleted on a case-by-case basis, and on the other, there are the closed channels. In the fourth quarter of 2021, YouTube recorded 3.85 million, more than 15 million for the whole year. We know that the closure of a channel is generally not “spontaneous”, in the sense that it is, in theory, following three warnings sent in 90 days, whether due to serious abuse or a rule deliberately violated.

And so, by extension, the number of deleted videos is quite impressive in reality. Because, when a channel is closed, all its videos are removed. In total, therefore, in the last quarter of 2021, 77.3 million videos were deleted following channel deletions, 280 million over the whole year. 9 out of 10 times (89.8%) a YouTube channel is terminated for posting spam or content that could be construed as trying to defraud users.

^{_{Source: YouTube release}}