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 our guidelines (as is often the case with spam accounts). When a channel is terminated, all of its videos are removed, revealed a report on community guidelines by YouTube.
From October 2023 to December 2023, 20,592,341 channels were removed. 2,254,902 videos were removed from India during October to December 2023.
YouTube also filters comments which are considered are spam for creators to review and approve if they choose. During October 2023 to December 2023, 1,197,687,868 comments were removed. The data does not include comments removed when YouTube disables the comment section on a video. It also does not include comments taken down when a video itself is removed (individually or through a channel-level suspension), when a commenter’s account is terminated, or when a user chooses to remove certain comments or hold them for review.
The majority of channel terminations are a result of accounts being dedicated to spam or adult sexual content in violation of YouTube’s guidelines.
When YouTube terminates a channel for receiving three Community Guidelines strikes for violating several different policies within a three month period, YouTube categorizes it under a separate label – “Multiple policy violations” – because these accounts were not wholly dedicated to one policy violation.
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 our Community Guidelines.