YouTube is Using AI and Humans to Remove Unsuited Videos

• YouTube is still dealing with inappropriate content on their platform.
• Over 8 million videos were deleted in a period of three months.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) is helping their staff to identify and remove unsuited videos

In the aftermath of the YouTube advertisement crisis also known as the "Adpocalypse", the company is still trying to make high-profile brands stay on its platform and spend money on ads. Employees at YouTube are having their hands full with removing extreme and unwanted content. At the same time, they are trying to make the rules less strict for the content creators.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK8qRNSmhEU]

To satisfy both sides, the company is now posting quarterly Community Guidelines Enforcement Reports in which they highlight their latest results on this matter.

According to the Digital Trends, YouTube states that they had deleted over 8 million videos in the period from October to December 2017. These videos contained sexual content, spam but also violent and terrorist-related material. All this work wouldn't be possible if the company didn't implement their latest machine learning technology. Thanks to these automated tools, they managed to scan and remove over 5 million videos before they reached a single view.

The same report also mentioned that YouTube is constantly updating its system for flagging inappropriate videos. The end result is good since around 8 percent of videos that contained extreme violence were flagged and removed before they reached 10 views.

This computer algorithm is not perfect, of course. Especially when it comes to content that is being deleted for copyright and other legal reasons. This is why YouTube is also using humans as the safe-measure if the AI fails to do its job properly. The report states that of all videos which were deemed inappropriate, one million were flagged by a "trusted individual". That is a real person, who the company trusts to be objective in checking the videos. By the end of 2018, YouTube states that the company will have a team of 10,000 reviewers. Their job will be to double check these situations where the algorithm is not capable of making the right decision.

The company still has a lot of work in order to establish the right balance between the content creators and the brands that advertise on its platform, and the transparency definitely plays the right role here.