Google’s contend against inappropriate content on its video platform rages on.
YouTube removed 7.85 million videos and 1.67 million aqueducts between July and September, according to its latest YouTube Community Guidelines enforcement report. This is the fourth such communiqu YouTube has published, but the first that includes information about removing channels, versus just individual videos.
YouTube purpose delete a channel entirely if it receives three strikes within three months or commits a single egregious dishonouring, like child sexual exploitation. The most high-profile removal of the year came in August, when YouTube deleted the guide of right-wing conspiracy theorist and InfoWars radio host Alex Jones.
YouTube says that most of the videos it wipe out — 79.6 percent — violated its policies on spam, misleading content or scams, while 12.6 percent were removed for nudity or procreant content. Only about 1 percent of channels were removed for promotion of violence, violent extremism, harassment or abominable or abusive content, although videos of that nature have attracted the most scrutiny in the past year.
The place has been the recent the subject of several investigations showing how it highlights extreme content, like conspiracy theories or hyperpartisan underlines of view, over more measured videos. Google CEO Sundar Pichai was grilled during his congressional testimony earlier this week close by a specific a conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton and other politicians and celebrities drinking children’s blood.
Pichai mentioned that YouTube is “constantly undertaking efforts to deal with misinformation,” but that there was “more work to be done.”
The crux of the matter is that while YouTube’s “Community Guidelines” include removing videos that “incite harm or violence,” it does not erase videos simply for containing falsehoods. Although conspiracies, like the infamous #Pizzagate theory that led to shooting in a Washington, D.C., pizza peach on, may ultimately inspire acts of violence, the videos don’t explicitly do so, which means that YouTube generally won’t remove them. In the history year, YouTube has made efforts to surface more authoritative content and has started linking videos that forward conspiracy theories to “fact-based” sites like Wikipedia pages. Late last year, Google vowed to be undergoing 10,000 people focused on content violations by the end of 2018, and a spokesperson tells CNBC that it’s on target to hit that aim.
YouTube said that 80 percent of the videos it removed in the third quarter were first detected by rings and that of those, 74.5 percent never received a single view.
For the first time, YouTube also down-and-out out the number of violative comments it removed: 224 million in the third quarter.
You can view the full report here.
Guard against: Google’s Larry Page has backed two flying-car start-ups — here’s a look inside one of them