YouTube suspends comments on videos with minors
Stricter measures to counter pedophile action after a user raised a complicated issue last week that led some large advertisers to remove their ads from the site.
YouTube has announced the decision to take more stringent actions to prevent episodes of pedophilia by removing comments in the videos depicting minors. The video-sharing portal has explained on its official blog that it intends to suspend comments in those videos that sees minor protagonists who may be at ” risk of enticement attempts “.
YouTube has also specified that only a small number of authors and creators of videos will be able to keep the comments section on videos depicting minors enabled.
” These channels should actively moderate comments, beyond the use of our moderation tools, and demonstrate a low risk of attracting bait attempts. We will work directly with them, and our goal is to grow this number over time. With the improvement of our ability to identify comments in violation of the rules ” reads the official YouTube blog.
The measure became necessary after a concrete problem was raised in recent weeks, when a user demonstrated how using a certain search key is achieved on completely normal videos, but using the related video algorithm is very easy to catch in apparently innocuous contents, but in the comments of which fragments of these minor portraits are exchanged in ambiguous poses and other pedophile information. The problem is that once stumbled upon in these videos. The algorithm continues to offer similar content, sharing the same problem.
Obviously in some of these videos there are the normal advertisements provided by the YouTube advertising platform, and the situation has prompted numerous advertisers (including some heavyweights like Nestlé, Disney, Epic Games, just to name a few) to withdraw their YouTube advertising for easily understandable reasons.
YouTube’s response to the situation was to temporarily disable comments on tens of millions of videos with minors and erasing hundreds of channels. The action has inevitably also involved legitimate videos and channels, raising the mood of creator and vlogger who mainly share family life scenes.
YouTube has also announced the launch of a new comment classifier that should be able to more effectively recognize problematic comments and eliminate them.
