YouTube deletes 150,000 videos due to predatory comments

[Shawn Knight]

YouTube is working at a feverish pace to rid its platform of a problem that threatens the brand’s reputation.

The Google-owned video-sharing site tells Variety that over the past week, it has removed more than 150,000 videos featuring children that had been targeted in the comments section by pedophiles. YouTube has additionally disabled comments for over 625,000 videos and terminated several hundred accounts that had been used to publish predatory comments on videos starring minors.

It doesn’t stop there, however, as YouTube has also removed advertisements from nearly two million videos and over 50,000 channels that were “masquerading as family-friendly.”

The matter has become quite serious for Google and YouTube. Bad PR look aside, the issues have prompted several big-name advertisers including HP, Mars, Cadbury, Deutsche Bank and Adidas to freeze ad spending on the platform.

A representative for HP told Variety that they have strict brand safety protocols in place across all online advertising, including YouTube. HP suspended all advertising worldwide on YouTube after learning that one of its ads was placed “in a terrible and inappropriate context.” That instance, the spokesperson said, appears to be the result of a content misclassification by Google.

Tougher enforcement on YouTube’s part should help to ensure that stuff like this isn’t a problem moving forward. Given YouTube’s scale, however, scrubbing the site and keeping it squeaky clean could prove to be a challenge, one that potentially opens the door for competitors like Jellies.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/72070-youtube-deletes-150000-videos-due-predatory-comments.html

 

[cliffordcooley]

That is right, punish everyone for a few crackpots. You should remove the offending person not the target person.

 

[EClyde]

Money talks...nothing else matters

 

[wiyosaya]

Well if YouTub's publicity is to be believed, it sounds like the problem is much larger than "a few crackpots." The author of this article has mixed using spelled numbers and character numbers, and the one that stands out to me is "two million videos", in character form, 2,000,000. That is a large number and the rest of the character numbers are not small by any means as I see it.

Unfortunately, human scum will pop up anywhere it gets the chance to take root much like bacteria - at least as I see it.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Well if YouTub's publicity is to be believed, it sounds like the problem is much larger than "a few crackpots."

I wonder how many of those numbers are from the same crackpot?

The point is don't remove content based on comments. Hell Techspot wouldn't have any articles, if they resorted to that method. What it boils down to is Youtube is large enough they currently don't care about their user base. If they had a smaller user base, they would be singing a different tune.

 

[senketsu]

Part of the problem (I read) is that they are using bots to produce and upload large numbers of these video's to YouTube to increase their ad revenue. Computer's analyze the words that produce the hits and pump out a video, since there isn't human oversight, this leads to some very strange, disturbing content. When it is on a place that is supposed to be 'kid friendly' parents turn their kids loose to watch, and watch and learn and absorb it they do. They don't have the capacity to discriminate and say WTF and contact YouTube. YouTube doesn't care because it drives their numbers and income up as well.

 

[TheBigT42]

So if someone wanted to get a channel banned...just create some fake accounts via a vpn...and make a bunch of bad comments....makes sense

 

[wiyosaya]

I wonder how many of those numbers are from the same crackpot?

The point is don't remove content based on comments. Hell Techspot wouldn't have any articles, if they resorted to that method. What it boils down to is Youtube is large enough they currently don't care about their user base. If they had a smaller user base, they would be singing a different tune.

I don't particularly care for the behemoths YouTub or Gagme myself, but even in my disdain, I would bet that they must have some sort of human guided intervention since their determination of what to do was different for different content. Some content removed, some content commenting was disabled, etc.

Perhaps the videos that they removed due to comments were videos that attracted the scum due to the content of the videos, and perhaps they were removed due to violations of YouTub terms of service. Even if it was one crackpot commenting, the content of the videos alone might have been enough of a violation of terms of service for them to be taken down.

We really do not know what the circumstances were, and in this, for me, rare, case, I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

 

[cliffordcooley]

We really do not know what the circumstances were, and in this, for me, rare, case, I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

You are correct, we don't know.

 

[loki1982]

Anyone getting upset about this obviously hasnt experienced the problem. I experienced it first hand. My young son was watching YTKids which is meant for kids. Someone decided to make hundreds of Mickey Mouse themed videos and place them on the site. Midway through the videos character would start undressing, talking about sex and other adult themes. The ******* purposes uploaded these with the intention of exposing kids.

Other people I disagree with are people like Dan TDM who does minecraft videos. Many young kids are fascinated with minecraft. His videos are full of cursing and somewhat adult themes. I'm not necessarily saying that he needs to be gone or anything as he isn't blatantly trying to harm anyone, but I think some responsibility should be taken when you know your main audience is tweens and teens.

 

[loki1982]

That is right, punish everyone for a few crackpots. You should remove the offending person not the target person.

Not everyone is being punished. Only those that can't help themselves be civil. I've never been punished for a single one of the 400+ videos I have uploaded to my 4 channels.