Transparency Report

Flags

At YouTube, we work hard to maintain a safe and vibrant community. We have Community Guidelines that set the rules of the road for what we don’t allow on YouTube. This section of the report provides data on the flags YouTube receives for possible violations of our Community Guidelines.

Human flags by flagger type

Videos flagged by all human flaggers
23,553,204

In addition to our automated flagging systems, Priority Flaggers and our broader community of users play an important role in flagging content. This chart shows the breakdown of flags that come from different types of human flaggers. The number above the chart shows the number of unique videos that were flagged. A single video may be flagged multiple times and for different reasons. Flagged content will remain live when it doesn't violate our Community Guidelines.

UserOrganizationOther99.8%
Flagging userAmount
User90,059,233
Organization160,677
Government agency14

Top 10 countries/regions by human flagging volume

We receive flags for suspected violations of our Community Guidelines from users and Priority Flaggers all around the world. The chart below shows the countries/regions from which we received the most human flags, ranked by total volume. Flagged content will remain live when it doesn't violate our Community Guidelines.

RankCountry/region
1India
2United States
3South Korea
4Russia
5Brazil
6Indonesia
7Japan
8Mexico
9Türkiye
10Vietnam

Human flags by flagging reason

Spam or mi…Hateful or a…SexualViolent or re…1/232.6%5.4%6.1%7.8%10.3%18.0%19.8%
Flagging reasonAmount
Spam or misleading29,400,884
Hateful or abusive17,855,933
Sexual16,223,976
Violent or repulsive9,301,986
Harmful dangerous acts7,030,706
Promotes terrorism5,483,703
Child abuse4,862,015
Other60,721

When flagging a video, human flaggers can select a reason they are reporting the video and leave comments or video timestamps for YouTube's reviewers. This chart shows the flagging reasons that people selected when reporting YouTube content. A single video may be flagged multiple times and may be flagged for different reasons. Reviewers evaluate flagged videos against all of our Community Guidelines and policies, regardless of why they were originally flagged. Flagging a video does not necessarily result in it being removed. Human flagged videos are removed for violations of Community Guidelines once a trained reviewer confirms a policy violation.

Community Guidelines enforcement

The YouTube community plays an important role in flagging videos that violate our Community Guidelines. Any logged-in user can flag a video by clicking on the three dots to the bottom right of the video player and selecting “Report.” Trained teams evaluate videos before taking action in order to ensure it actually violates our policies and to protect content that has an educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic purpose. The teams carefully evaluate flags 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They remove content that violates our terms, age-restrict content that may not be appropriate for all audiences, and leave content live when it doesn’t violate our guidelines.

Learn more

Priority Flagger program

The YouTube Priority Flagger program provides robust content reporting processes for government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are particularly effective at notifying YouTube of content that violates our Community Guidelines. Participants of the Program receive a policy training and have a dedicated path of communication with our Trust & Safety team. Because participants’ flags have a higher action rate than the average user, we prioritize them for review. Videos flagged by Priority Flaggers are subject to the same policies as videos flagged by any other user and are reviewed by our teams, who are trained to make decisions on whether content violates our Community Guidelines and should be removed.

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The life of a flag

As you’ve learned in this report, “flags” mark content that may violate our Community Guidelines. This video explains how YouTube receives flags, actions reviewers take on flags, and other processes and policies that help us keep the YouTube community safe.

Flagged video process examples

These are examples of videos that were flagged as potentially violating our Community Guidelines. These examples provide a glimpse of the range of flagged content that we receive and are not comprehensive.

Flagging reason
Sexual
Flagger type
Priority Flagger
Video description
A video depicting a minor engaging in a sexual act.
Outcome
Video violates child safety policies prohibiting content that includes sexualisation of minors, and the channel was removed.
Flagging reason
Child abuse
Flagger type
Priority Flagger
Video description
A video depicting a minor in non-sexual activity, with a video title sexualising the minor.
Outcome
Video violates child safety policies prohibiting content that includes sexualisation of minors, and the channel was removed.
Flagging reason
Hateful or abusive
Flagger type
Priority Flagger
Video description
A video depicting a minor with their face on another’s body with audio to imply the minor is homosexual.
Outcome
Video violates harassment and cyberbullying policies prohibiting content with the intent to shame, deceive or insult a minor, and the channel was removed.
Flagging reason
Child abuse
Flagger type
Priority Flagger
Video description
A video which solicited sexual imagery from minors at school.
Outcome
Video violates child safety policies prohibiting content that includes sexualisation of minors, and the channel was removed.
Flagging reason
Hateful or abusive
Flagger type
User
Video description
A video claiming that the March 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand mosque shootings were fake.
Outcome
Video violates hate speech policy prohibiting content that denies that well-documented violent events took place. Video was removed.

YouTube Community Guidelines enforcement

Viewers and Creators around the world use YouTube to express their ideas and opinions. YouTube’s approach to responsibility involves four Rs: Remove violative content, Raise authoritative voices, Reduce recommendations of borderline content, and Reward trusted creators.

Learn more at How YouTube Works
Spam or misleading
Hateful or abusive
Violent or repulsive