YouTube announced that it removed over 100,000 videos and 17,000 channels for “hate speech” violations in the second quarter of 2019, a fivefold increase over the previous period.

In an official blog post, the Google-owned video platform announced that it also removed over 500 million comments in Q2, double the number of the previous period, “in part due to a large increase in hate speech removals.”

YouTube also boasted of its “Intelligence Desk,” a new unit established in January 2018 that monitors emerging trends on the platform, as well as its 10,000-strong team of censors.

In January of 2018 we launched our Intelligence Desk, a team that monitors the news, social media and user reports in order to detect new trends surrounding inappropriate content, and works to make sure our teams are prepared to address them before they can become a larger issue.

We’re determined to continue reducing exposure to videos that violate our policies. That’s why, across Google, we’ve tasked over 10,000 people with detecting, reviewing, and removing content that violates our guidelines.

YouTube also boasted of its ability to throttle the virality of “hate speech” on its platform.

Because of our ability to remove this content quickly, videos that violate our policies generate a fraction of a percent of the views on YouTube.

For example, the nearly 30,000 videos we removed for hate speech over the last month generated just 3% of the views that knitting videos did over the same time period.

In its community guidelines enforcement report, YouTube also revealed that over 750,000 of the videos removed in the last quarter were a result of reports from an “Individual Trusted Flagger.” In 2018, it was reported that the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), known for smearing critics of progressivism, was one of YouTube’s trusted flaggers.

The report also states that over 3,300 of videos removed were a result of reports from an NGO, and five removals were a result of reports from a government agency. It is unclear if these removals were related to alleged “hate speech” violations.

The report comes three weeks after YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said the company was trying to “strike a balance of enabling a broad set of voices, but also making sure that those voices play by a set of rules that are healthy conversations for society.”

Breitbart News has reached out to Google for comment.

Are you a corporate or Big Tech insider who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com. 

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.