Curbing misleading and inappropriate content on the platform, has been a critical challenge for YouTube, given the evolution of technology, YouTube India director Ishan John Chatterjee said on Wednesday. The video-sharing platform, which, as per Statista, has around 467 million users in the country said it has strong guidelines in place that tackle the menace of content moderation on the platform. Content moderation means removing the screening of irrelevant, obscene, illegal, harmful, or insulting content on the platform.
“Content moderation is a critical challenge for YouTube. It is also a critical challenge for society as a whole as technology is starting to evolve. We have very well established community guidelines that dictate what kind of content is allowed on the platform,” Chatterjee said while addressing the media on 15 years of YouTube’s presence in India.
“The guidelines address issues like violence and graphic content. In addition, one of the policies relates to misinformation and content that is technically manipulated to mislead users where it causes egregious real world harm. That is not allowed on our platform and we will act against it,” Chatterjee added.
In a bid to tackle the potential harm of emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies like deepfakes and to inform users,YouTube has been working on models like AI-generated watermarks which will be displayed on the videos created using AI.The solutions are key to tackle the emerging trend wherein videos and content are created with an Avatar and without actual human beings.
“Two things that we are looking at – one is metadata and one is watermarks, that will come from from content that is AI generated. And those are ways for viewers and for us to be able to use and detect harmful content which is of critical importance. We have made significant investments and are advancing towards that,” Chatterjee added.
Talking about the YouTube’s journey since 2008, Chatterjee along with Pawan Agarwal, director of music partnerships in India for YouTube, shared insights into evolving trends in content creation with changing preferences of consumers and how the platform has brought in different creation tools to make their videos better and as per the consumer interests. Apart from the expansion of different video tools, the company witnessed traction in multiformat consumption of content – long-form, short-form, live, and pre-recorded content across mobile and connected TV screens.
“Today, audiences want personalised experiences, in different formats, to meet different needs. And, these evolving preferences are redefining entertainment and making consumption more participative. This is allowing trends to travel farther, helping fandoms become multi-layered, and propelling subcultures to become mainstream,” Agarwal said.
Talking about increase in fandom of content creators, YouTube said 48% of Gen Z surveyed said that they have watched videos made by fans of specific content, artists, or public figures over the past 12 months.
For its next leg of growth, YouTube believes that evolution in technology will democratise complicated forms of self-expression and will keep on changing the trends in content creation and consumption. “New technologies like AI will make it easier for users and for creators to execute complicated ideas,” Chatterjee said.
According to Chatterjee, technology advances will continue to push the boundaries of creativity and the growth of connected TVs and YouTube Shorts together will drag the next wave of growth for the platform.
“More YouTube is now being consumed on the living room screen and at the same time, more creation is happening on mobile devices,” Chatterjee said, adding that last year living room was, the fastest growing consumption surface for YouTube.
In order to increase content creator enagagement with advertisers, YouTube will soon live commerce on Shorts to enable live shopping of products.
In the last three years, YouTube has paid out $50 billion to artists and partners globally. Further, for music, the company has paid $6 billion to industry between July 2021 and June 2022. Globally, YouTube had 80 million paid subscribers as of September 2022.
