YouTube Disables Comments on Children’s Videos Following Paedophilia Attacks
In its fight to reduce paedophilia, YouTube has disabled comments on videos featuring minors.
The massive video sharing platform made the announced this week, following profound accusations that the site assisted paedophiles in searching for videos of young children.
In a blog post, YouTube noted that young and old minors could be at risk of attracting predatory behaviour.
Last week, Matt Watson, a video blogger released a video on the platform, detailing how YouTube was promoting sexual exploitation of children.
The video soon became viral and shortly amassed over a million views in less than a week. In reaction to this, Disney, AT&T and Epic Games, Nestle, Hasbro, Peloton and many other companies began to pull their ads down from the platform.
YouTube, in turn, began to take down the offensive comments as well as associated accounts of paedophiles on the platform.
But it would seem the problem may be more than anyone ever envisaged, as YouTube has taken down over 400 accounts including their comments signalling other paedophiles with underage content.
YouTube also disclosed that it was working urgently to overhaul and clean up the site. It noted that in the coming months, it will widen its efforts to crack down on paedophiles lurking on the platform.
The company announced that it had developed a tech that would allow them to spot abusive comments and remove them automatically.
It also revealed that while this new development may affect the way creators would connect with their audience, keeping young children safe would always come first.
Videos involving youths and adults would have the comment section intact, except in cases where specific content is prone to attract predatory remarks.
With millions of videos uploaded every day, YouTube proclaimed that it would use its AI algorithm to track down videos of minors.
Additionally, YouTube also took down channels it claimed was endangering children. These channels were known to including shocking details in the middle of children videos.
However, a small number of content creators will be allowed to have the comment feature on their content involving children. These channels, such as family vloggers would be required to monitor and moderate the comments on their page to show that their videos were risk-free.
Last year, YouTube faced a similar crisis when parents started reporting troubling videos on YouTube Kids. A video depicting Mickey Mouse in a pool of blood with Winnie looking on in horror was reported and it was taken down.
