The pandemic resulted in YouTube removing highest number of videos in a single quarter in its history. The company said it removed twice as many videos in April-June 2020 as compared to the first three months of the year. As the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated in March, YouTube, like other platforms, modified its content moderation policies to reduce reliance on human reviewers and bank more on automated systems. Human reviewers would have maintained higher accuracy, but would leave a lot of harmful content online, YouTube said. So it chose to rely on automated systems, while being aware of potentially over-enforcing its community guidelines. "Because of choices we made to prioritize the safety of the community, we removed the most videos we've ever removed in a single quarter from YouTube," it said in its latest report on enforcement of community guidelines. 11 million videos were removed altogether (by humans and automated systems) between April-June, as compared to 6 million videos removed in January-March. Second highest removals from India: Of the 11.8 million videos removed, 1.4 million were removed from India, accounting for the country with the second highest number of videos taken down after the USA. A little over 820,000 videos were removed from India last quarter. 3x increase in removal of most sensitive content: For the most sensitive content, such as having violent extremist content and which jeopardise child safety, there was a three-fold increase in removals. YouTube said it erred on the side of caution and "accepted a lower level…
