YouTube removed over 29 lakh videos in India – most for any country, here’s why

India has once again topped the list for the highest number of YouTube video removals globally, according to the latest Community Guidelines Enforcement report released by YouTube. Over 2.9 million (29 lakh) videos were removed from the platform in India between October and December 2024 for violating YouTube's Community Guidelines.
“YouTube’s Community Guidelines are enforced consistently across the globe, regardless of where the content is uploaded. When content is removed for violating our guidelines, it is removed globally,” the google-owned company said.
This figure represents a 32% increase compared to the previous quarter. India has held the top position at the top of the takedown list consistently since 2020. Brazil followed India with over 1 million video removals during the same period.

YouTube said that its automated content moderation tools played a significant role in identifying these violations, flagging over 99.7% of the total policy-violating videos removed globally. Human flagging accounted for only a small fraction of the removals.
“Most removed comments are detected by our automated flagging systems but they can also be flagged by human flaggers. We rely on teams around the world to review flagged comments and remove content that violates our Terms of Service, or leave the content live when it doesn’t violate our guidelines,” YouTube added.

The primary reason for video removals globally was “spam, misleading and scams” (81.7%), followed by harassment (6.6%), Child Safety (5.9%), Violent or graphic (3.7%) and others. YouTube also reported terminating over 4.8 million channels between October and December 2024, primarily for violating spam policies.
YouTube also said that it removed about 1.3 billion comments “for violating our Community Guidelines and filtered as likely spam which creators did not approve.”
“Using a combination of people and technology, we remove comments that violate our Community Guidelines. We also filter comments which we have high confidence are spam for creators to review and approve if they choose,” the company added.