YouTube removed more than 9 million videos for violating its community guidelines in the October-December 2024 period, the platform announced on Friday. Child safety violations accounted for the majority of removals at 54%, followed by harmful and dangerous content (16%). Other violations included violence, nudity, harassment, hate speech, and misinformation.
For another consecutive year, India led global video takedowns, with nearly 3 million removals. Brazil followed with 1.04 million, while the United States ranked third with 900,000 videos removed. YouTube reported that 96.5% of flagged videos were detected automatically, without human intervention. Additionally, 55% of these videos were taken down before receiving any views. However, channel removals saw a sharp decline. In the last quarter of 2024, 4.8 million channels were terminated, a significant drop from 20 million during the same period in 2023. The highest number of removals last year occurred in January-March 2024, when 15.8 million channels were taken offline for violations.
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YouTube also cracked down on comment sections, deleting over 1.25 billion comments in the last quarter of 2024, with 81.7% attributed to spam. The company said 99.7% of these comments were automatically detected and removed.
To maintain content integrity, YouTube relies on AI-powered moderation combined with human review. Flags for violations come from automated systems, YouTube’s Priority Flagger program, and user reports. The platform affirmed its commitment to enhancing enforcement mechanisms to ensure a safe and compliant environment for its users.