Skip to main content

YouTube deletes 30,000 videos for hate speech and promises new harassment policy

YouTube said that it removed more than 30,000 videos last month that contained hate speech content. 

In a blog post published on Tuesday, September 3, the video platform also announced it plans to update its current harassment policy, which will represent a “fundamental shift in our policies.” 

Recommended Videos

“We’ve been removing harmful content since YouTube started, but our investment in this work has accelerated in recent years,” YouTube said. “Because of this ongoing work, over the last 18 months we’ve reduced views on videos that are later removed for violating our policies by 80%, and we’re continuously working to reduce this number further.”

YouTube’s latest updates — that they said are “coming soon” — focus on removing content, raising authoritative voices, rewarding trusted creators, and reducing the spread of material that is against policy. 

“We go to great lengths to make sure content that breaks our rules isn’t widely viewed, or even viewed at all, before it’s removed,” YouTube said in Tuesday’s post.

YouTube initially made updates to its anti-hate speech policy in June. The updates now remove videos that feature supremacist views, as well as videos that deny the existence of “well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary.” 

According to YouTube, the videos containing hate speech content that were removed over the last month represented only about 3% of the views that videos about knitting had during the same time frame. 

The video platform has had a year of policy updates due to a variety of different issues. In April, YouTube updated its harassment policy because of creator-on-creator harassment that was occurring on the platform. 

In June, the Wall Street Journal reported that YouTube was considering significant changes to its recommendations algorithm in regards to videos aimed at children. According to reports, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was in the late stages of investigating the platform’s treatment of kids. 

Then in August, YouTube was sued by a group of LGBTQ YouTube creators due to alleged discrimination toward the LGBTQ creators and community, according to The Verge. 

Digital Trends reached out to YouTube to see when the new updates will officially be implemented to the platform, but we haven’t received a response. 

Allison Matyus
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Allison Matyus is a general news reporter at Digital Trends. She covers any and all tech news, including issues around social…
Searches for health topics on YouTube now highlights personal stories
The red and white YouTube logo on a phone screen. The phone is on a white background.

Google and TikTok aren't the only places people look for information on health issues. YouTube is another resource people look to for educating themselves on health-related topics. Now, YouTube has launched a new feature in an attempt to further support those queries in a different way.

On Wednesday, the video-sharing website announced its latest feature via a blog post. Known as a Personal Stories shelf, the new search-related feature will yield a "shelf" of personal story videos about the health topics users search for. Essentially, if you search for a health topic, a Personal Stories shelf may appear in your search results and it will be populated with YouTube videos that feature personal stories about people who have experienced the health issue you searched for.

Read more
This beloved TikTok feature is coming to YouTube Shorts
Two mobile devices showing two people dancing in YouTube Shorts videos.

YouTube Shorts, the video-sharing website's answer to TikTok videos, is getting a new comment reply feature and with it, looks more like its wildly popular competitor.

On Thursday, the new feature was announced via an update to a YouTube Help thread titled "New Features and Updates for Shorts Viewers & Creators." The announcement was posted by a TeamYouTube community manager.

Read more
YouTube is finally getting serious about podcasts
The red and white YouTube logo on a phone screen. The phone is on a white background.

Podcasts certainly aren't new to YouTube, but the popular video-sharing site appears to be making it easier to find them on its sprawling platform.

9to5Google has reported that YouTube has created a dedicated Explore page for podcasts and that it is currently live on the site for some users. The new Podcasts page is apparently still rolling out and has been since at least late July. While not everyone is able to view the new podcast Explore page right now, some of us at Digital Trends have been able to access it.

Read more