YouTube's 2020-Q1 Transparency Report Is Out!

Context:

• Each quarter, YouTube releases statistics on how many channels were terminated, videos removed for violating the community guidelines, and how many reports were submitted by different groups of people (NGO, GO, average users, Trusted Flaggers).
• This is a post to break down the data to a more readable format!

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TERMINOLOGY:

• TF: Trusted Flagger - individual user of the platform with high report volume and accuracy.
• NGO: Non-Government Organization - Organizations that are not affiliated with governments that report specific categories of abuse (like NCMEC, who reports child safety violations)
• GO: Government Organization - government-sponsored agencies that report abuse that violates local laws.
• Flag: YouTube's internal term for a report (DOES NOT MEAN REMOVAL OF A VIDEO!)

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Author note: Think of a statistic that isn't shown but you'd like to see? Comment below! I'm more than happy to add to the post (and future posts!)

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TERMINATIONS:

A total of 1,975,135 channels were terminated, causing 51,534,861 videos to be removed by channel-level suspensions. (Average of 26.1 videos per channel.)

• 87.5% (1,727,720) of terminations were for spam/scam/deceptive practices.
• 8.0% (157,957) of terminations were for nudity/sexual content.
• 2.6% (51,069) of terminations were for child safety violations.
• 0.6% (11,842) of terminations were for harassment/cyberbullying.
• 0.5% (9,997) of terminations were for terrorism.
• 0.5% (9,507) of terminations were for multiple violation categories.
• 0.1% (2,672) of terminations were for hate speech.

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VIDEOS:

A total of 6,111,008 videos were removed for violating the community guidelines. It should be noted that these are not necessarily the same videos removed in the list mentioned in the terminations level removals. For example, if a channel received only a single strike, it wouldn't necessarily be terminated (except in cases of severe abuse - think child safety and terrorism) and thus it wouldn't be included in the terminations count.

• 93.5% (5,711,586) videos were removed by automated detection.
  • 49.9% (2,850,081) removed before any views on the video.
  • 27.4% (1,564,975) removed with less than 10 views
  • 22.7% (1,296,530) removed with more than 10 views
  • Automated removal includes, but isn't limited to:
    • Spam detection
    • Duplicate upload of prior removed abuse
    • Terrorism detection
• 6.5% (399,422) videos were removed after one or more reports from users
  • 75.2% (300,407) removed after user reports.
  • 22.8% (91,203) removed after TF reports.
  • 1.9% (7,774) removed after NGO reports.
  • 0.0% (38) removed after GO reports.
• Breakdown by category:
  • 37.0% (2,263,383) removed for spam/scam/deceptive practice violations.
  • 24.3% (1,482,109) removed for child safety violations.
  • 14.3% (873,351) removed for nudity/sexual content violations.
  • 11.4% (699,651) removed for violent/graphic content violations.
  • 5.0% (304,133) removed for harmful/dangerous content violations.
  • 4.2% (258,908) removed for terrorism.
  • 1.8% (107,174) removed for hateful/abusive content violations.
  • 1.4% (86,189) removed for other violations.
  • 0.6% (36,110) removed for harassment/cyberbullying violations.
• Top 5 Countries (based on uploader IP: VPN's can change where your internet traffic appears to come from):
  • USA: 1,021,380 (17.9%)
  • India: 826,661 (14.5%)
  • Brazil: 484,536 (8.5%)
  • Indonesia: 442,140 (7.7%)
  • South Korea: 262,020 (4.6%)

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COMMENTS

A total of 693,579,605 comments were removed.

• 99.6% (691,044,176) by automation
• 0.4% (2,535,429) by human reports
• By category:
  • 67.9% (470,724,394) - Spam/Scam/Deceptive
  • 13.9% (96,648,423) - Child Safety
  • 11.8% (81,531,167) - Harassment/Cyberbullying
  • 6.3% (43,539,615) - Hate speech

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Report Accuracies By User-Type

• 12,155,210 unique videos were reported.
  • 99.2% (54,054,064) of reports were from average users.
    • Bare minimum 0.556% accuracy.
  • 0.7% (406,846) of reports were from TF's.
    • Bare minimum 22.417% accuracy.
  • 2.9% (12,158) of reports were from NGO/GO.
    • Bare minimum 64.254% accuracy

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APPEALS

Of the 6,111,008 videos removed...

• 165,941 (2.72%) were appealed.
  • 41,059 (24.74%) were reinstated after an appeal.
    • PLEASE NOTE: This is not the % inaccuracy of YouTube's removals.
    • This is the % inaccuracy of YouTube on videos appealed.
    • We cannot accurately apply this to the total removals as you don't know if the set of videos that weren't appealed were correctly taken down or not.
    • We also do not know if they were left without appeal because the creator knew they were against the rules or if they just didn't appeal it for any other reason.

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Misc Information

• "YouTube utilizes technology to prevent re-uploads of known violative content before that content is available to the public. We have long used this technology to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse imagery on the platform."
  • Simple terms: YouTube has bots that remove duplicates of previously detected abuse.

SOURCE: https://transparencyreport.google.com/youtube-policy/removals