Record Number of Videos Removed on YouTube in Quarter
It became known that a record number of videos were removed from YouTube in the second quarter of this year. In total, 11,401,969 videos that somehow violate the platform’s rules were not moderated during the reporting period, which is a record figure for the quarterly segment.
This was achieved thanks to the expansion of the use of content moderation algorithms after many employees of the service had to switch to remote work due to the coronavirus pandemic, which led to a decrease in the number of people-moderators. For comparison, in the same period last year, only 8,988,500 videos were deleted.
“ Given the significant reduction in the ability of people to inspect content due to the pandemic, we were forced to choose between potentially insufficient and potentially excessive controls. Since accountability is our top priority, we chose the latter – using technology to help get the job was done that is usually left to reviewers, ”reads a post on the YouTube developer blog.
As a reminder, last month Google, the parent company for YouTube, announced that its employees will be able to continue working from home until next summer. This applies to employees residing in the US, UK, India, and some other countries.
YouTube admits that the use of moderation algorithms will lead to a “decrease in the level of accuracy” in the process of checking videos of different topics. Because of this, in some cases, videos that do not contradict the service policy can be deleted from the platform. Creators of videos who believe that the content they publish does not violate the rules of the service can appeal. According to published data, the number of videos recovered on appeal increased from 25% in the first quarter to 50% in the second quarter.
