Singapore among the top 10 nations flagged for uploading questionable YouTube videos

Singapore is among the top 10 nations that have uploaded the most YouTube videos that have been removed for disregarding community guidelines, according to a Google Transparency Report. 

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It comes in at number 10 with 100,555 videos removed from January 2024 to March 2024. Google also removed 1.2 million questionable videos in Singapore between October 2023 and December 2023. 

Coming in first is India with 2,618.760 videos removed in the January to March 2024 period followed by Brazil with 776,923 videos removed. The data is based on the uploader’s IP address at the time the video was uploaded.  

In the report, it also highlighted that within the January to March 2024 timeline, it had removed 15,7999,880 channels globally. 

A YouTube channel is terminated if it accrues three community guidelines strikes in 90 days, has a single case of severe abuse (such as predatory behavior), or is determined to be wholly dedicated to violating guidelines (as is often the case with spam accounts). When a channel is terminated, all of its videos are removed, explained YouTube. 

The majority of channel terminations are a result of accounts being dedicated to spam or adult sexual content in violation of its guidelines.

It also noted that it removed 7,996,564 through automated flagging and 238,058 from human detection. Flags from human detection can come from a user or a member of YouTube’s Priority Flagger program. Priority Flagger program members include NGOs and government agencies that are particularly effective at notifying YouTube of content that violates its Community Guidelines.

The platform added that it also strives to prevent content that breaks its rules from being widely viewed before it's removed.

This chart shows the percentage of video removals that occurred before they received any views versus those that occurred after receiving some views, it said. 

YouTube added that also removed 1,443,821,162 comments between January to March 2024. 

Most removed comments were detected by its automated flagging systems but they can also be flagged by human flaggers.

It added that 83.9% of comments were removed for being spam, misleading or scams. 

This comes as YouTube begins to strengthen its enforcement on third-party apps that violate its terms of service and, in particular, on ad-blocking apps. 

In a statement earlier this year, YouTube said that viewers using these third-party apps may experience "buffering issues" or see the error message, “The following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch a video. 

It said that it would like to emphasise that its terms do not allow third-party apps to turn off ads because that prevents the creator from being rewarded for viewership.

"Ads on YouTube help support creators and let billions of people around the world use the streaming service," it said. 

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