The record 5.8 million Youtube channels removed in the third quarter of 2022 is a result of the fact that they were flagged as either misleading, participating in scams or simply spamming.
Atlas VPN analysis disclosed that Google’s video platform removed a record number of channels last quarter — 5.8 million, making it the highest volume of removed channels recorded so far, compared to 4.8 million during the third quarter of 2021.
The analysis shows that over 91.2% of all removed channels last quarter were flagged as either misleading, participating in scams, or simply spamming. Also, the number of channels removed in Q3 2022 increased by 1.8 million compared to Q2, representing a growth of 46%.
According to Atlas VPN, the figures were extracted from the YouTube Community Guidelines enforcement report.
Another 194 thousand channels, or 3.3% of the total, were terminated due to breaking YouTube’s community guidelines by showcasing nude or sexual content.
Meanwhile, an official statement by YouTube notes that the high volume of terminated channels might be due to the actions they have taken to preserve their workforce and cut in-office staffing in response to COVID-19.
Most videos deleted in India
When YouTube deletes a channel, all of its videos are removed as well. Together with 5.8 million channels, due to channel-level suspension, more than 5.6 million videos were removed in the third quarter of 2022.
Surprisingly, one country stands above the rest in terms of the volume of recordings terminated.
Throughout Q3 2022, as many as 1.7 million videos originating from India were deleted. The second country on the list — Indonesia, saw 629 thousand videos removed.
The United States stands in third place, with 534 thousand removals. Brazil (276 thousand) and Russia (218 thousand) round up the top five countries in terms of deleted Youtube videos as a result of overstepping community guidelines.
Interestingly, video and channel removal reasons differ completely.
While 91.2% of channels were removed due to spamming, misleading, and scams, only 3.9% of videos were removed based on these grounds.
In contrast, the largest portion of videos were terminated due to child safety concerns, totaling 2 million videos deleted, comprising 36% of the total.