YouTube’s Video Takedown: YouTube Removed 58 Million Videos

If you have not been able to find the ‘phony’ video you’ve already watched quite a few times on YouTube then stop trying. As it performed a broad purge of spam videos and channels from 13th December to 14th December YouTube is the most popular video platform and the second most popular website site in the world, as of 2018. It warned creators earlier that they might notice a significant drop in subscriber count as a result of the spam content removal.

The Google-owned video giant regularly works to verify the authenticity of the accounts and clean up spam and bogus content.  In an effort to remove spam on its platform, the video service shared a warning with users on December 13th. "You may see a noticeable decrease in your subscriber count as we remove spam subscriptions from your channel.”, said the company in a post on YouTube Help Forum.

In the previous quarter, YouTube has removed 7.85 million videos, 22.4 million comments, and 1.67 million channels making an additional 50.2 million videos disappear from the site. It is also the first time that it has revealed the number of comments it had to take down. Machine Learning played a vital role in the purging process by detecting the spammy content on the site’s platform. Reportedly, a channel is deleted entirely on committing a single egregious violation or receiving three strikes within three months for violating community guidelines in any way. As per Google CEO Sundar Pichai, YouTube is “constantly undertaking efforts to deal with misinformation.” and “they are looking to do more.”

The channels from which spam subscribers are removed will be notified through a notification banner in YouTube Studio or Classic Creator Studio. Furthermore, any channel falling below the threshold of 1000 subscribers for YouTube Partner Program (YPP) - its ad-revenue sharing program, will be removed from the program in the result of the purge. Despite the on-going debate, we appreciate YouTube on its efforts for better and quicker removal of any violating content.