YouTube has always been a place where people come to be informed, inspired, and delighted. Over the past few months, as our daily lives have changed in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, we’ve seen people turning to YouTube more than ever. As part of our ongoing commitment to transparency, we’ve created How YouTube Works — a new website designed to answer the questions we most often receive about what we’re doing to foster a responsible platform for our community, and explain our products and policies in detail. How YouTube Works will launch in the U.S. today with plans to launch in more countries over time, starting in mid-June.
Answering the important questions
How YouTube Works addresses some of the important questions we face every day about our platform — involving topics such as child safety, harmful content, misinformation, and copyright, as well as tackling timely issues as they arise, like how we have responded to the COVID-19 crisis and how we support elections. Within the site, we explain how we apply our responsibility principles (the Four Rs) — which work alongside our commitment to users’ security — to tackle these important questions.
Get to know our products and policies
How YouTube Works provides an in-depth look at our products and settings, such as YouTube Search, Recommendations, privacy controls, and Ad Settings, showing how they help people have the best possible experience while they’re using YouTube. Additionally, users will find details of our policies — like our Community Guidelines and monetization policies — so everyone in the community knows what they can and can’t do on YouTube. We explain how our policies are developed and enforced in partnership with a wide range of external experts and Creators.
Learn about the progress and impact we’ve made
To show the progress we’ve made on managing harmful content, How YouTube Works includes facts and figures from our Community Guidelines Enforcement Report, which explain how and why we’ve removed videos recently.
We also provide data, records, and current trends that have emerged on YouTube to help you better understand the next generation of Creators and artists. People can explore the stories behind some of YouTube’s creative entrepreneurs as well, and discover how they are transforming their lives and communities — like Cheong Choon Ng, who built a thriving craft business; and Meredith Bell, who was able to realize her dream of becoming a farmer.
How YouTube Works is an important part of our ongoing transparency efforts to ensure millions of users, creators, and artists can continue making YouTube a place to connect with others, learn about the world, and showcase their creative talents.