Posted on 02/28/2019 3:01:05 PM PST by yesthatjallen
NOTE: If you want to understand this issue, go to the 20 minute video I posted in the comment section. The first 10 minutes will be enough.
YouTube on Thursday announced that it will no longer allow people to comment on videos featuring young children after an advertiser boycott over concerns that the platform had enabled a "soft-core pedophile ring."
The video-streaming giant in a blog post wrote that it suspended comments on videos featuring "young minors" and those featuring "old minors" that posed a risk of attracting "predatory behavior."
"Over the past week, we disabled comments from tens of millions of videos that could be subject to predatory behavior," YouTube wrote. "These efforts are focused on videos featuring young minors and we will continue to identify videos at risk over the next few months."
According to the blog post, some creators will be allowed to keep comments enabled on videos of children, but they will be held to higher standards.
"These channels will be required to actively moderate their comments, beyond just using our moderation tools, and demonstrate a low risk of predatory behavior," YouTube wrote. "We will work with them directly and our goal is to grow this number over time as our ability to catch violative comments continues to improve."
Several major companies in recent weeks pulled advertisements from Google-owned YouTube, citing the platform's inaction on predatory comments.
The boycott came after YouTuber Matt Watson uploaded a video explaining how YouTube comment sections are used to identify and share exploitative videos of young girls. A group was using the platform to post comments on videos of young girls, referring one another to certain freeze-frames. According to subsequent reports, YouTube's algorithm led the ring's members from one video of young girls to the next.
Companies including Nestle, "Fortnite" creator Epic Games, AT&T, Kellogg and others pulled their ads from the platform after it was discovered that those ads were appearing alongside some of the targeted videos.
YouTube on Thursday also wrote that it has also accelerated the launch of an artificial intelligence moderator that "will detect and remove 2X more individual comments."
"No form of content that endangers minors is acceptable on YouTube, which is why we have terminated certain channels that attempt to endanger children in any way," it wrote. "Videos encouraging harmful and dangerous challenges targeting any audience are also clearly against our policies."
"We will continue to take action when creators violate our policies in ways that blatantly harm the broader user and creator community," the post continued. "Please continue to flag these to us."
Nestle, in a statement to The Hill, confirmed that it lifted its YouTube boycott four days ago, after Google took actions ensuring "Nestlé advertising standards were met."
"Google has now confirmed that expected actions have been fully completed and additional safety measures put in place to help eradicate bad behavior and provide better protection to innocent users and advertisers," Nestle said in the statement.
AT&T told The Hill that it does not have a comment at this time. Other companies who pulled ads did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
I wonder if Youtube is going to do anything about them?
Probably not.
Too many Anthony Weiners out there I guess.
I just created a “Gab” (gab.com) account and installed the “dissenter” plugin for my browser. I can now comment on *any* web page that exists!
...all of those fake news media sites that don’t allow comments or only “friendly” comments are now fair game.
Fallout from the Covington situation.
Fine with me, doesn’t bother me at all.
A huge fraction of YT’s audience is made up of minors, so that’s going to put a bit of a crimp in their eyeball count I should think.
Oh well. La di da.
Wow, that does nothing to solve the problem.
It’s just a matter of time before YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter and other liberal cesspools collapse completely based on their own standards of hatred.
That will be a wonderful day for America when social media is as irrelevant as the telegram or a pay phone.
Alinsky rule #4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."
Funny, isn't it. Sucks to be them.
As much as I dislike censorship in principle, this is a good idea. It is long overdue.
I tried to load it onto a Chrome browser and a Mozilla browser and couldn’t do it. The icons they described, a little cog wheel and something else, never appeared on the pages they were supposed to. Finally just gave up.
Looks as if they've removed all the past comments and disabled future comments from The Voice Kids videos which number in the thousands. I don't recall a single comment that would have fit the category they're trying to eliminate. Overkill.
Would this mean no one can say what a great drummer that Japanese girl is who rocks out to Led Zeppelin?
Try Alt-Shift-D on a web page...the keyboard shortcut, should open a window.
If the problem is that some sick weirdos would look at a video of a kid doing some innocuous thing and post sexual comments, then it solves that problem. Sure it creates some others like letting sick freaks define what normal people can do and probably hurts some of the content creators.
If the problem is that some people are sick weirdos that get sexual feelings from looking at kids, you're right it won't solve the problem.
Again, the ultimate responsibility of protecting your child is yours, not the government's or a corporation's.
No, the pages I refer to are the internal settings pages of the browsers.
I think in some cases, comments will be allowed, especially in the first few weeks or months.
If someone wants feedback, but without becoming the wrong kind of blog, they may invite the viewer to contact them or a rep. directly.
I don't know what the solution is when someone can see sexual content where other people don't.
Do you only post photos and videos of young kids from the waist up and fully dressed?
Lol, I don't post videos. I just watch videos of The Voice, The Voice Kids and Voice Senior from nations around the world. Comments have been eliminated from most all Voice Kids videos based on a quick check of several after I saw this thread.
There has been a UK Voice Kids for two seasons. That's the only English language version now of the many VK shows around the world. The various VKs have their own youtube channels and individual videos are posted from the channels and by individuals. The translated comments were pretty informative on the non-English language shows. Still, most of the songs performed are in English all over the world for the various Voice shows.
Voice Senior and Voice Kids can actually be better than the regular Voice shows because the kids can be more entertaining and the seniors sing the great music most familiar to anyone older than mid-30s or so.
I didn't mean you.
I meant you as in 'anyone who posts anything on the internet'.
From now on do the people who post photos and videos on the internet only post kids fully dressed and above the waist.
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