A censor beep is an audio tone on a specific frequency. Nowadays we are not only hearing beep sounds on radio or television anymore. It became a universal tool for storytelling as well as censorship across multiple mediums, like in Videos on YouTube or Audio in Podcasts.
The definition based on Wikipedia is
“(…) the replacement of a profanity or classified information with a beep sound (…) in television and radio.”
To understand what an audio beep is, I uploaded a video to youtube. If you need a bleep sound effect, you can just download one free of charge.
On Youtube censor beeps are used to beep out a word or it is used to indicate a conceptual break in a video. This can be something like a cut to a different scene, or a humoristic usage of a beep sound.
Let’s say in your Video there a word used you would classify as “bad language” or profanity. The FCC (Federal Communication Commission) has the right to regulate broadcast that is un-bleeped. Furthermore Youtube is trying to serve family-friendly content – profanity or inappropriate language is currently (jan 2020) not allowed based on the Advertiser-friendly content guidelines.
That’s why you would download a beep sound and overlay it on your audio. There is also a way to get your videos beeped automatically. Try it for free.