YouTube has removed more than 17,000 channels and over 100,000 videos in the last few weeks. YouTube's massive crackdown on channels and videos has been active ever since it changed its policies and guidelines on hateful content in June. YouTube wants to live up to its responsibility by following four core principles (4 R's): Remove, Raise, Reward and Reduce. But what do they mean, you may ask? According to YouTube, its primary focus will remain more on deleting content that violates its policy  - as quickly as possible. Here's everything you need to know.

YouTube swings into action

YouTube says it will promote official channels and videos when people are looking for breaking news and information. More steps are being taken by the Google-owned video platform to reward 'trusted' or eligible content creators and artists. At the same time, YouTube says it wants to reduce the spread of content violates its policy. YouTube said that the sudden rise in the removal of channels and videos is due to older comments, videos and channels

YouTube will remove violent, mature cartoons directed towards minors

"The spikes in removal numbers are in part due to the removal of older comments, videos and channels that were previously permitted. In April 2019, we announced that we are also working to update our harassment policy, including creator-on-creator harassment. We’ll share our progress on this work in the coming months," YouTube said in its blog post.

Highlights of YouTube's crackdown

YouTube said that more than 17,000 channels 100,000 videos were removed for hate speech, indicating a significant rise in the hate speech. The company said that the number of video removals and channel terminations for hate speech witnessed a considerable uptick (5 times). At the same time, YouTube announced that total comment removals almost double in the Q2 2019, to more than 500 million. Such a massive crackdown on comment removals was due to a significant increase in hate speech removals.

YouTube removes robot fighting videos, thinks that's animal cruelty

YouTube tweaks community guidelines

YouTube has changed its guidelines for the community contributions to prevent spam translations from getting published. YouTube said that creators would need to manually review their Community Contributions to check for spam before publishing, making it difficult for erroneous or trolling translations seeping into the published version. Creators can also flag abusive content in translations for YouTube to review. Users can also turn off Community Captions and remove translations that have already been published.