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YouTube is facing a real crisis after learning that its comments were being used to organize a child exploitation network. The big advertisers fall like flies. In response, YouTube announced Thursday that it was disabling comments on almost all videos containing minors.
The controversy began earlier this month when YouTuber Matt Watson shared a video describing the use of YouTube comments by what he called a "soft-core pedophile network." It showed that sexual predators were able to use comments to identify non-sexual video content. which included minors and would appeal to pedophiles. According to Watson, YouTube's recommendation algorithm helped predators find each other. They would exchange contact information and links to child pornography. Previously, YouTube had announced that it had banned the accounts of 400 users and removed millions of comments in response to this news. But today we are going further with a radical new policy.
In a blog post, YouTube announced the launch of several initiatives to protect young people. He said that he had already disabled comments on "tens of millions of videos" and that he would suspend in the coming months "comments on videos featuring young minors and videos putting in scene of older miners likely to attract predatory behavior ".
We do not know how YouTube will decide if an older miner should be considered "likely to attract predatory behavior." We asked YouTube if they could provide more details about this process and will update it as soon as we receive a message. reply. For sensitive policies like this, high-tech companies often hold information for fear that users will try to play with the system.
It seems that YouTube hopes that this will not have to be a permanent policy. He said that this would allow "a small number of creators" to allow comments on "these types of videos". These creators will have to moderate their comments and "demonstrate a low risk of predatory behavior". The goal is to expand the number of creators to whom an exception to the ban on comments has been granted over time, with YouTube's algorithms improving their ability to intercept offensive comments.
Speaking of algorithms, YouTube has a new one. He said he "accelerated" the launch of a new, twice-effective comment classifier to identify and remove "predatory comments". You may be wondering why it has not accelerated this launch before if this acceleration was still an option? The obvious answer is that Disney, AT & T and the makers of Fortnite They had not noisily pulled their ads from the network before. The other obvious answer is that the accelerated product is probably not ready for Primetime.
YouTube also seemed to vaguely respond to concerns over the Momo Challenge, a recurring viral hoax that spread online this week, warning parents that children's videos contain a scary figure that encourages kids to kill themselves and kill them. their parents. The hoax reached a viral peak Wednesday when Kim Kardashian warned his supporters and begged YouTube to do something. In today's blog, YouTube reiterated that "videos promoting harmful and dangerous challenges that address all audiences are also clearly opposed to our policies."
At a time when you can associate your watch with the daily privacy scandals on Facebook and technology companies who constantly apologize, it's easy to miss the substantial changes that are happening all the time. We need more companies to behave in the same way that Pinterest simply killed vaccine-related research when they realized they had a virus-free issue. YouTube's comment sections are generally considered the worst place on the Internet that is not 4Chan. Disabling a specific set of comments is a good start and hopefully the beginning of a movement. We can live to see a day when all comments disappear and people are forced to keep it for themselves. Until then, we will take what we can get.
[YouTube via The Verge]
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