YouTube Removes 9.5 Million Videos, India Leads in Takedown

YouTube removed nearly 9.5 million videos between October and December 2024. India saw the highest takedowns, with almost 3 million videos deleted.

The videos were found to be violating YouTube policies against hate speech, violence, harassment, and misinformation.

It uses AI and human reviewers to detect and remove harmful content. Most flagged videos are taken down before they gain many views.

Child safety violations led to over 5 million removals. Other reasons included violence, harassment, spam, and misinformation.

YouTube also took down 4.8 million channels, mainly for spam and scams. When a channel is removed, all its videos disappear, wiping out over 54 million videos.

Comments weren’t spared either. YouTube said that it deleted 1.2 billion comments, mostly for spam, but also for harassment and threats.