YOUTUBE VIDEO REMOVALS DURING LOCKDOWN
                     YOUTUBE VIDEO REMOVALS DURING 
LOCKDOWN
INTRODUCTION
• YouTube has removed more videos than 
ever during the lock-down period, as per 
the company.
• The second quarter of the year saw the 
removal of over 11 million videos, up 
from six million at the beginning of the 
year.
Source: BBC
OVER-FORCING
• YouTube said it opted for “over-forcing” 
its automated systems when it was 
understaffed during the lockdown.
• But that also meant that more videos 
were being removed by mistake.
Source: News Break
MALICIOUS CONTENT
• Malicious content would be sent to 
human reviewers.
• But because of Covid-19 there were 
fewer reviewers working.
Source: Ars Technica
AUDITING CAPABILITY
• One option was to downsize the 
technology and limit the application to 
only what could be managed with 
reduced auditing capability.
Source: Search Engine Journal
WIDER NETWORK
• The other option was to cast a wider 
network so that most of the content that 
could potentially harm the community 
was quickly removed.
Source: News Break
RESTORED VIDEO
• Normally, it restores about 25% of the 
videos that were automatically removed 
as a result of human review. 
• This has now jumped to 50% of videos 
restored on appeal.
Source: Raymond
STRICTER AUTOMATIC RULES
• YouTube has put in place stricter 
automatic rules in areas such as violent 
extremism and child safety, leading to a 
threefold increase in video removals.
Source: News Break
YOUTUBE VIDEO REMOVAL
• YouTube relies on its automated features 
to perform almost all of its initial 
removals. 
• Between April and June, 10,849,634 
videos were detected by the automated 
system.
Source: The Guardian
HUMAN USERS
• Human users actually flagged many more 
videos more than 15.5 million in the 
relevant period.
• But only a small percentage of those were 
eventually taken down.
Source: The Sun
SPAM USERS
• The company also removed nearly two 
million entire channels in the three-
month period, not a significant increase 
on the previous quarter. 
• More than 90% of those were for spam, 
scams or being misleading.
Source: YouTube Creator Academy