progress & impact
Building a more responsible platform over the years
At YouTube, we’re committed to building a responsible platform our users, creators, and artists can rely on, and over the years, we’ve made huge progress making our community safer. But we know that work is never finished - and we’ll continue to invest in the teams, technology, and product features it takes to make sure YouTube continues to be a place where people come to be informed, inspired, or just plain delighted.
2021
Announcement of the YouTube Shorts Fund, a $100M fund distributed over 2021-2022, to reward creators for their contributions to YouTube Shorts. Even though this is open to creators outside of YouTube Partner Program (YPP), channels will still need to abide by YouTube’s Community Guidelines, copyright rules, and monetization policies.
Introduction of Violative View Rate (VVR) metric as part of the Community Guidelines Enforcement Report to help determine what percentage of views on YouTube comes from content that violates policies
In the first quarter of 2021, the VVR is at 0.16-0.18%, down by over 70% when compared to the same quarter of 2017
Introduction of a new “Checks” process which automatically screens creators’ uploads for potential copyright claims and ad suitability restriction
2020
Launch of information panels to help viewers stay up to date with 2020 U.S. presidential election results, including an additional link pointing to a page on the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency website
Our election results information panels have collectively been shown over 8B times
2019
Started reducing recommendations of English-language borderline content outside of the U.S.
70 percent drop in watchtime of borderline content coming from non subscribed recommendations in the U.S. in 2019. We saw a drop in watchtime of borderline content coming from non subscribed recommendations in other markets as well.
Expanded information panels providing context on election candidates to cover the 2019 EU Parliamentary election candidates
Comments disabled on videos featuring minors to reduce risk of predatory behavior. Over the next few years, YouTube's ability to detect and remove violative comments significantly improved.
In Q4 2019, we removed over 42 million comments for violating our child safety policy - the vast majority of which were first detected through our automated flagging systems
Recommendations system updated to reduce recommendations of borderline content and harmful misinformation
70 percent drop in watchtime of borderline content coming from non subscribed recommendations in the U.S. in 2019. We saw a drop in watchtime of borderline content coming from non subscribed recommendations in other markets as well.
2018
2017
2015
2012
2010
2007
Launch of the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) - a first-of-its kind business model that shares the majority of revenue generated on the platform with creators who have built a significant audience on YouTube and who consistently comply with the YouTube Terms of Use. Over the next few years, we continued strengthening requirements for creators to join YPP.
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