YouTube receives videos every minute that violate its many policies, whether pornographic or copyrighted material or violent extremism or misinformation. In recent years, the company has refined its artificially intelligent software to prevent the vast majority of these regarded as violative videos from being uploaded to the site. However, it continues to be under scrutiny for its failure to curb the spread of harmful content.
How Much Content Does Youtube Take Down?
According to The NewYorkTimes, on Tuesday, April 5, YouTube disclosed a new metric to demonstrate its effectiveness in removing rule-breaking videos: the Violative View Rate, a measure of how many views came from videos that did not meet its guidelines before they were released.
In the fourth quarter of 2020, YouTube reports that less than 1 percent of all active views are on content that broke their rules. That is, out of every 10,000 views on the popular video platform, 16 to 18 are violations. That's a 70% drop from 2017 when they started monitoring this.
YouTube said it did not disclose how many times a problematic video had been watched before it was removed. The reluctance to display user-generated content highlights the challenges facing platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. Even though YouTube has created software that allows computers to detect 94 percent of problematic videos before they are even viewed, total views remain high due to the platform's enormous size.
YouTube committed to disclosing percentages rather than total numbers to help contextualize the significance of inappropriate content on YouTube, Ms. O'Connor explained.
YouTube provided this metric, which the company has tracked for years and anticipates to fluctuate over time, in its quarterly report detailing how it enforces its guidelines. In that same report, YouTube did give the number of objectionable videos and comments removed by the company.
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Youtube's Effort Is Still a Work in Progress
According to TechRadar, the Community Guidelines Enforcement Report documents the clear progress YouTube has made since 2017, but the company acknowledges that they are not quite finished, YouTube added.
"It is critical that we constantly review, update and improve our policies, work with experts, and stay transparent about the results of our enforcement work. We are committed to these changes because they are good for our audience and good for our business. Violent content has no place on YouTube." the company states.
YouTube has not described the kinds of policy violations seen before videos are removed from the platform.
Like other social media platforms, YouTube must find a balance between balancing freedom of expression and effective policing when it comes to hateful and misleading content.
This is a problem faced by this company daily, as it is a giant when it comes to providing consumers with a place to watch different types of content.
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This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Lionell Moore
