YouTube deleted about 150,000 videos in Bangladesh from October to December 2023 due to non-compliance with their policies. Apart from this, this video streaming site has also deleted users’ opinions on various topics.
According to a report by DismissLab, a neutral and non-political online verification and media research platform, these videos and comments were deleted for promoting extremism, nudity and spam videos and not being child-friendly. Not only in Bangladesh, more than 9 million videos have been deleted from all over the world during the mentioned period. Neighboring India has the highest number of deleted videos. There the position of Bangladesh is eighth. Apart from this, more than 200 million YouTube channels were also deleted from YouTube during this time.
Harmful or dangerous content was the most common type of video removed for violating Community Guidelines – at 39.2 percent. The content was removed due to the risk of inciting violence or immediate harm, the report said.
The most removed are videos that may be of concern to the safety of children. Its rate was 32.4 percent. The report states that the videos have been removed to prevent harassment and online abuse of children.
From Bangladesh, 6 lakh 38 thousand videos have been removed in one year
According to the Google Transparency Report, 638,440 videos uploaded from Bangladesh were removed in 2023. In the last three months of 2022, the platform removed 1 lakh 15 thousand 907 videos from Bangladesh. The video removal rate increased by 31.19 percent in the last three months of 2023 compared to 2022. According to the report, the number of views and subscribers has increased since several channels in Bangladesh posted fake informational content on YouTube, and YouTube is also earning profit from these fake content advertisements.
On the other hand, the third category of videos that were removed the most were violent or graphic content. Its rate was seven and a half percent. YouTube defines riots, bloodshed etc. as violent or graphic content.
There have been cases in the past where YouTube has removed videos and channels for violating their policies. In the three months from October to December 2018, 8.3 million videos were deleted. In the then quarterly ‘Enforcement Report’, YouTube authorities mentioned that these videos were deleted for not complying with the Community Policy that year.
At that time, YouTube authorities said that YouTube authorities received 9.1 million requests from YouTube users to remove sexual videos in three months. 47 lakh received complaints of hate speech or offensive video posts. Most of these complaints came from India, USA and Brazil.
In January last year, YouTube also removed videos like this. Between January and March 2023, 1.1 million 80 thousand videos were removed from YouTube’s Indian platform during these three months. Apart from this, YouTube removed 6 lakh 54 thousand 968 videos in America, 4 lakh 91 thousand 933 in Russia and 4 lakh 49 thousand 759 in Brazil.
In that time, YouTube has removed more than 6.48 million videos from its platform for allegedly violating community guidelines.
YouTube verifies policy violations by applying both human and machine learning algorithms, i.e., artificial intelligence (AI). However, about 96 percent of deleted videos were decided by AI. The removal of the remaining 4 percent of videos is said to be done based on complaints or suggestions from YouTube’s general users and ‘Priority Flagger Program’ or community members.
Between January and March last year, TikTok deleted 42,36,493 videos uploaded from Bangladesh. TikTok said the videos were removed in order to prevent the spread of misinformation and to keep users safe online. According to the latest ‘Community Guidelines Enforcement’ report released by TikTok at the time, in the first quarter of the year, 91 million 3 thousand 510 videos were removed for violation of policies worldwide, which is about 6.6 percent of the videos uploaded to the platform. Of these videos, 5 crore 34 lakh 94 thousand 911 videos have been deleted through automatic detection technology. However, after verification, 62 lakh 9 thousand 835 videos were brought back to TikTok.
In addition to deleting videos, TikTok also deleted 1 crore 69 lakh 47 thousand 484 accounts worldwide from January to March on suspicion of users under the age of 13.
At the same time 5 crore 12 lakh 98 thousand 135 fake accounts were also deleted. At that time, the TikTok authorities said that such steps were taken to prevent the spread of wrong information and to make the online safer.