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On YouTube, a Network of Paedophiles Is Hiding in Plain Sight

zamalek 8y ago
But they can figure out when a video has copyrighted music at 1% volume in the background.
- mschuster91 8y ago
  Because that is a trivial task as the question "is there licensed music in the track" is binary and really easy to do given a large enough number of fingerprints. Detecting if there is a child in the video is more difficult, but do-able with current ML models. Now, however, determining why there is a child in the video - if it is a family "fail" video or pedo material, for example - via AI is about as impossible as trying to distinguish between satire, hate speech or propaganda via AI. It's not possible at all, as AI will for the near future totally lack context. This distinction will require humans, and this is something not viable at all for fb, youtube, twitter & co, as it is a huge cost... the saving of which is offloaded to society though in form of e.g. undermined democracies or psychological trauma in sexual violence survivors.
  - antris 8y ago
    They already have an AI to detect these videos: the recommendation engine mentioned in the article. These videos aren't difficult to find.
    - mschuster91 8y ago
      The "recommendation engine" is a stupid "people searching for x clicked on y" thing. Not intelligent at all. And banning keywords won't help, that's just whack-a-mole'ing.
    - NathanKP 8y ago
      The recommendation engine doesn't know what the content is or in what way it is similar, it just knows that people who view this video often view this other video. On the bright side the recommendation engine grouping all these videos means that once YouTube identifies one video as inappropriate they can easily use the recommendations to find and delete all the other videos that are also being viewed by the same pedos.
      - shkkmo 8y ago
        > On the bright side the recommendation engine grouping all these videos means that once YouTube identifies one video as inappropriate they can easily use the recommendations to find and delete all the other videos that are also being viewed by the same pedos. That is exactly the point, they have this ability and are not using it. Not even to disable comments.
    - hello_friendos 8y ago
      Some of the videos were up for months, and youtube did nothing to remove them after being asked.
  - filesystem 8y ago
    The quick & dirty solution here would be to disable comments if children are detected
    - anonymousab 8y ago
      The problem with that is YouTube's awful history of and approach to false positives. People would be a lot more willing to accept blanket and risky experiments to solve these problems if there was a viable and reliable reconciliatory/redemptive path for when those systems get it wrong. For better or worse, YouTube hasn't focused on scaling that part of their system, so there will be apprehension and scepticism with any approach they take.
    - shkkmo 8y ago
      They could also use their own recommendation engine to flag videos for manual review.
  - ErikVandeWater 8y ago
    > Now, however, determining why there is a child in the video It doesn't matter why the child is in the video. The pedophile only cares that there is a child. Videos uploaded with children in them will be exploited, regardless of whether they are legitimate.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      Banning the public from uploading videos featuring children, or worse, deleting those already there, will be extremely unpopular. And I'm not convinced it's necessary.
      - shkkmo 8y ago
        How about disabling comments, proactively deleting illegal content and not helping people find more non-illegal but potentially exploitative content? I feel like you have missed the point. YouTube is actively helping people find this content and making money off of it.
      - zamalek 8y ago
        I honestly don't think you can do anything about pedophiles watching otherwise innocent videos of children. The article claims that there is nudity (via timestamp comments). Separate models could be used to score the video, where a child plus any other potentially sexual content (genitalia, nipples) withholds the video. A withheld video can be appealed (for scenarios such as "breastfeeding tips" or what-have-you), much like copyright strikes, which have an existing process. Obviously the model might have problems discerning between a 17 and 18 year old, but it would catch the most egregious content.
    - ScoutOrgo 8y ago
      So we should just ban all videos of children then?
    - nopriorarrests 8y ago
      In this case we will have to ban children movies (Harry Potter?) and TV channels, which sounds too harsh. As long as child is not performing some sexually suggestive stuff on youtube video ("popsicle challenge", wtf) it is OK, probably.
  - illumin8 8y ago
    This is not true. ML can detect kids in videos, and if there was any financial incentive to doing so, Youtube could follow their recommendation graph to know exactly what type of content to ban or restrict commenting on. The reason why they find licensed music in videos is because they have a financial (profit) motive for doing so. Find a licensed track, and get a few fractions of a penny every time someone watches that video. There is no financial incentive to blocking CP, so they don't bother. This is a real shame.
    - tcd 8y ago
      > ML can detect kids in videos It can't detect context, however. >The reason why they find licensed music in videos is because It's technically easier to do so. ML is still new, and it still makes mistakes, this is why people complain about content ID because it takes down videos that are "fair use". Explain to me, Mr Expert, how a ML algorithm can understand the nuance of the law, interpret it flawlessly like a human would (say, in a court of law). Unless you're saying these cases no longer require humans, courts and judges, and ML is at a point where it's _flawless_ and accurate 100% of the time. It's a shame you're so technically weak minded, I thought the Hackernews community would be educated in this regard. Please go read about how ML works before making such comments in the future, they make you look really stupid.
      - illumin8 8y ago
        >> ML can detect kids in videos > It can't detect context, however. You don't actually need to, at least initially. You only need to detect kids, and when you have some threshold of reports on comments on a video where the computer vision algorithm detected kids in the frame that rise to the level a human should take a look, the human can flag the video as containing elements of CP, which would kick in the following: - Deeper ML analysis of the dependency graph of commentors, related videos. - Blacklisting or law enforcement notification for commentors that are violating the law. - Training data that can be used to train more advanced algorithms. Because there is no profit motive to do so, like there is with music licensing, they won't do it. > It's technically easier to do so. I'm not talking about determining context with ML. That is a hard problem, of course. But identifying "child human" with a computer vision algorithm is very simple, then relying on human moderators to initiate the dependency graph traversal. > Please go read about how ML works before making such comments in the future, they make you look really stupid. No need for the ad hominem. I'm not an ML expert, but I understand enough of the basics to know what is possible.
- _wmd 8y ago
  While content ID is another problem, I agree it is highly convenient the same recommendation system that permits (and enables, and encourages!) this activity can't internally be reused by them to prevent it. They already pay contractors to filter through illegal images, in comparison this seems like.. no pun intended, childsplay The most horrid thought occurred to me while reading this, that somewhere within Google there may be a glossy (autogenerated or otherwise) report detailing exactly how many people are watching these videos and falling into this particular gradient of the recommendation model. Perhaps even read and passed up as too difficult to extract value from by their ads team. A company of this size (YouTube, not just Google) couldn't possibly be oblivious to this
  - ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
    If they have that segment I doubt it would be difficult to extract value from them.... Just advertise Spy Cameras, Thailand Vacation Packages, and Annual Passes to Disneyland, no ?
- jdminhbg 8y ago
  I know, it's crazy. It's almost like the feasibility of a task is unrelated to the importance of a task.
css 8y ago
> Enter “twister girl” and autocomplete suggests “little girl twister in skirt” Jesus… Credit where credit is due, I learned about this from MattsWhatItIs: https://youtu.be/O13G5A5w5P0 https://youtu.be/O13G5A5w5P0 Which is similar to the recent videos PayMoneyWubby has been exposing: https://youtu.be/5PmphkNDosg https://youtu.be/5PmphkNDosg and https://youtu.be/M78rlxEMBxk https://youtu.be/M78rlxEMBxk It reminds me of a darker version of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate.
- Murdoch 8y ago
  This issue was brought to YouTube's attention by another content creator. They say they are working to disable comments on some videos and delete some accounts. Its tough when kids upload innocent videos and it is the comment sections that become filled with predators. I do want to say this MattsWhatItIs guy appears to be motivated by attention and ignored the fact that Youtube was looking into this and continues to push for people to go after advertisers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLsYQYHHqoM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLsYQYHHqoM
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    Frankly, getting advertisers involved is probably the best way to get actual meaningful action taken.
  - 908087 8y ago
    It's convenient that simply disabling comments allows youtube to continue monetizing these videos while pretending pedos aren't their main audience.
  - anonymousab 8y ago
    People likely feel that they are not doing (or spending) anywhere near enough on the problem. Particularly because many of the gripes with YouTube have gotten deliberately worse, yet the situation with stuff like creepy Elsa videos (and by extension, creepy comments and suspected pedophile activity) has not improved for years. The 'adpocalypse' showed that the best way to enact any meaningful change on YouTube is to get the advertisers riled up. So that's the lever they're going to focus on. I think it's always going to be a double-edged sword at best.
matz1 8y ago
So, do you want them to ban all child video ?
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  Frankly, that might not be a bad idea. There are some interesting consent issues surrounding this sort of thing. As an example of why, this much-criticized article where a mommy blogger's fourth grader discovered she'd been the subject of a bunch of columns: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/01/03/my-daughter-asked-me-stop-writing-about-motherhood-heres-why-i-cant-do-that/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/01/03/my-daugh...
  - TACIXAT 8y ago
    Banning children from uploading to large public sources sounds extreme but it could actually create really good market conditions for host-your-own services. A group of friends could have their own video host.
    - 52-6F-62 8y ago
      You mean like a containerized version of *tube people accessed as a service run for them, or encouraging people to actively host and maintain their own? Maybe an ideal service would offer both— paid private and shareable containerized hosting and an open-source or free-download host-your-own option.
- chooseaname 8y ago
  Yes. And keep parents from uploading them too: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/when-kids-realize-their-whole-life-already-online/582916/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/when-...
  - micah94 8y ago
    Many of the children are uploading the videos themselves.
INTPenis 8y ago
Speaking of pedos hiding in plain sight; around 16 years ago there was a Verizon bust in Canada of some pedo networks. One such network of sites fled to a new web host that had not heard of the preceding events. They came to their new host as a BSD consultancy firm. It wasn't until the new host stumbled upon their HTTP traffic that they noticed some strange domain names. And later found a whole network of message boards setup for "people" talking about grooming children for sex. On the surface it was a legitimate business, under the surface it was horrible. They were kicked out of their new hosting and looking at their domains a few weeks later they had found a new home with PRQ. :( This youtube stuff is also sad because these kids are uploading their videos with no other intent than to have fun. And now someone has to explain to them that their videos will receive special treatment because of sickos online. Maybe leave the videos alone and teach kids not to answer strangers online instead?
- barbecue_sauce 8y ago
  BSD as in Berkeley Software Distribution?
  - ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
    Business. Sustainability. Development. I think... "S", could be for Services.
- UnFleshedOne 8y ago
  If you want plain sight you need not look further than Catholic Church.
srkmno 8y ago
The media will always sensualize the tiniest flase positive/negative that will always exist, not because they don't understand how this stuff works but because generating outrage is their business model, and if they can show how their "journalism" can affect change by getting advertisers to drop one of their most hated rivals that's just gravy.
- 908087 8y ago
  Generating outrage is still a cleaner business model than monetizing pre-teen crotch shots, which is the business model you seem to be defending here.
  - robertrobot 8y ago
    That's a false dichotomy brother.
  - srkmno 8y ago
    I'm saying that YouTube is successfully blocking 99.9999% of cases but journalists make their living by that 0.0001% context and nuance be damned.
  - NathanKP 8y ago
    That's a pretty bold strawman argument. I don't think anyone is arguing that YouTube should be monetizing pre-teen crotch shots. The way I read it OP is pointing out a definite trend in which the other mainstream medias like to jump on any situation that they can use to attack YouTube and YouTube's ad revenue. Wired in particular has a weird fascination with criticizing YouTube and YouTubers. It's a pretty transparent attack by one media that is losing attention against another media that has the attention. You can see it to some extent with how other media formats report on Facebook as well. It's not just a war for attention, its a war to reduce the ad budget that gets spent on the competing platform. In particular for Wired making articles like "Pewdiepie is a nazi" or "YouTube is full of paedophiles" isn't just about reporting, or even clickbait to attract views. They also specifically mention ads in these type of articles as a way to hurt the bottom line ad revenue of YouTube by trying to scare advertisers away from advertising on YouTube.
Udik 8y ago
Although I understand that the comments section under the videos can be problematic for various reasons, what is the intrinsic issue with people being turned on by kids videos? It's probably the worst sexual preference to have in terms of societal acceptance, but as long as it doesn't cause any harm to others- i.e., it's limited to watching innocent youtube videos- it seems perfectly fine.
- LVDOVICVS 8y ago
  Turn yourself in now.
- sam0x17 8y ago
  This -- people need to differentiate between "I think this is disgusting, but there is nothing illegal about this" and "this is illegal". You can't have your cake and eat it, in that you can't have a (relatively) free society with freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and not cater to pedofiles in some way. This is the (totally worth it) price we pay for not having systematic state censorship.
  - krapp 8y ago
    >You can't have your cake and eat it, in that you can't have a (relatively) free society with freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and not cater to pedofiles in some way. Maybe, but you can still criticize a platform for a monetization algorithm that optimizes for pedophiles, collecting the cash and looking the other way. Although I think that, in doing so, we shouldn't absolve parents of their own responsibility, since often adults are pimping their children out for the views.
    - sam0x17 8y ago
      Youtube basically lost the monetization battle when it legitimized the view that advertisers should have any sort of say in what content gets shown next to their ads. 10-15 years ago, that concept didn't exist in the online advertising space, publishers were first class citizens, and advertisers didn't get any say in anything and would get banned more often than publishers for not meeting advertiser standards (which I don't even think are a thing anymore). Now it's completely switched. Catering to advertisers is rapidly killing youtube, and a large portion of the web as a viable platform for free expression. You are right, but by criticizing said platform, you are giving advertisers more leverage and basically helping to even further whitewash an already heavily censored internet. It's not just children. Look at the comments on any video and you'll see all kinds of abusive/sexual-harrassment comments. It has always been like this, and it will always be like this unless you want an algorithm to detect the "offensiveness" of your comments, which will result in certain topics being completely banned unintentionally (think China's handling of the term"tiananmen square massacre" if you want a working example of this). And the worst part is, it's essentially advertisers that get to decide what content is OK for you to view. I'd rather take the lack of censorship any day and pay a subscription, thank you.
unclebucknasty 8y ago
The somewhat overt nature of this brings a question to mind: We know that our social networks have been invaded by foreign adversaries to sow chaos and division. Is there any research as to whether they've also sought to undermine us via promoting the degradation of our moral values as a society? At a minimum, it would reduce our moral standing in the world, and potentially produce a numbing to or higher tolerance for other types of moral deficiency in which they might seek to engage. In general, it would be demoralizing to see this constant stream of depravity in your own culture. Seems it would be potentially very effective and consistent with other lines of attack we've seen.
- jerf 8y ago
  Not much need to hypothesize, it's sourced to the point Wikipedia has an article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures Wikipedia does not explicitly call out moral warfare, but if you keep Googling on that term you can find a lot of chatter about it, of various levels of veracity. It's only a baby step beyond what is very firmly established; I don't find it hard to believe.
  - unclebucknasty 8y ago
    Yeah, I'm familiar with active measures in general. What you referenced is the well-publicized piece I mentioned. I'm specifically talking about the morality line of attack, and whether there is similarly well-documented/sourced discussion of same (that is, beyond random Googling for which results might also include disinformation).
    - jerf 8y ago
      There is stuff that passes my credibility filter for "probably true", and it comes up early in the web searches, specific statements about specific policies from first-hand sources of people in the relevant positions in the cold war, or at least I've seen no challenges that they aren't who they say they are. The people/entities who would publicize this and make it "officially official" have every motive in the world not to, so you're not going to find something like a 60 Minutes report on it or anything. (I think that for all the "officially official" sources casually commit lies of commission all the time, their true power is in the lies of omission.) I have to apologize for the vagueness, but the HN gestalt would not particularly care to examine the details of this matter too closely. It would result in... nontrivial cognitive dissonance.
freeflight 8y ago
This is yet another of those "Omg pedophiles everywhere!" hysteria cases where people are too busy being all freaked out without actually looking at the facts. Ain't helping that the guy who "discovered" this claims it is some kind of "YouTube wormhole" you supposedly fall into and never ever can escape from. Even tho he pretty much did everything to make the results come out as they did (fresh YouTube account, using a VPN, looking up content that's already considered as "soft-core" for many users). But the reality is that these videos show nothing illegal or really that out of the ordinary. The fact that some people derive sexual pleasure from them, is something that can never be stopped unless you introduce something akin to mass-scale thought/mind-control. Because before it was YouTube videos or the Internet it was plain old children underwear catalogs printed on paper and without these, or YouTube videos, those people would just do a Google picture search of "childrens underwear" and get unlimited pictures of children in equally revealing poses as in those YouTube videos. What to do about that? How to "fix" any of this? Particularly in an age where becoming a "YouTube personality/influencer" is increasingly peddled as some kind of viable choice of occupation for younger people and even children [0]? [0] https://www.businessinsider.de/ryan-toysreview-7-year-old-makes-22-million-per-year-youtube-2018-12?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.de/ryan-toysreview-7-year-old-ma...
- crushcrashcrush 8y ago
  Your comment is highly disturbing. I don't have enough Karma to downvote you, but please take a long walk and come back and read what you've written.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    As disgusting as the thoughts and feelings might be, we shouldn't be trying to regulate what people think and feel inside their own heads. That's a level of tyranny that would be a living hell. It's also corrosive to society to create a situation where everyone is paranoid about the "other" hiding in plain sight among us. This paranoia over internal mental states is precisely the kind of oppression which was directed against Jewish people and against homosexuals in the past. This is precisely what was called out in the "Have you no Decency?" moment where McCarthy's fall started. In 2019, outrage mongering should automatically trigger skepticism -- especially if the subject matter is extra lurid and stigmatizing.
jl2718 8y ago
Stop monetizing kids.
- 908087 8y ago
  As a result of a few close friends having children, I was recently introduced to certain channels run by parents who seem to have had children specifically to be used as youtube props. It's pretty sad. It's probably safe to assume child "influencers" have an even rougher road ahead of them than many child actors did. I wonder how many or few of the parents who are making a living doing this are putting money their children earned them aside for their children? Based on the sizes of the houses and pools in the background rapidly increasing over time in a couple channels my niece watches, I'm guessing not many.
- umvi 8y ago
  It's bad when parents get hooked on the cash flow they receive from exploiting their children online https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FamilyOFive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FamilyOFive
- dandare 8y ago
  Also, stop advertising to kids. Experts in psychology and whatelse, with huge budgets, work tirelessly to make your kid intensely crave something it does not need.
duado 8y ago
Well, I can guarantee you that YouTube will solve this problem. Why? Because major advertisers are pausing all advertising on YouTube. The only leverage we have against the Internet giants is their money supply.
giarc 8y ago
Lines like this tell me the author has no idea how advertising works these days "The videos are also being monetised by YouTube, including pre-roll adverts from Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Fortnite, Grammarly, L’Oreal, Maybelline, Metro: Exodus, Peloton and SingleMuslims.com." These companies don't choose to advertise on these videos specifically. Youtube is just placing the ads there based upon the viewer etc. I imagine there are some exceptions for high profile youtubers and companies that pay directly to display their ads prior to their videos, but the accounts in question don't likely fall into that category.
- chillydawg 8y ago
  Companies do not get to play that card in their defence. They know full well they are scatter gunning and that some small percentage of their ads will end up next to/in front of awful content. They know this - they've seen it happen time and time again. They continue to do it because it's cheaper to do so and occasionally take some PR flack and then blame Youtube. Ultimately - your ad, your problem. If you value your brand so poorly that you don't care where you advertise, this is what happens.
  - giarc 8y ago
    My issue is that authors often try to name and shame the companies as if they had some say. Companies should definitely reach out to Youtube or their marketing company to correct the problem but every single advertiser could have their ads shown before that video. That's how the ad network works.
    - behringer 8y ago
      They are at fault because they choose to pay youtube to be placed in front of videos designed for pedos. There are plenty of advertisers that pay the content creators directly for in-video ads, there's already a model where you can choose exactly what kind of content you want your ad featured in. I'll say it again, these advertisers are choosing where to advertise.
dawnerd 8y ago
Some of these comments here are disgusting. I thought HN would be better than this. YouTube could start requiring validation for uploaders before they’re monitized or allow comments. Require a credit card on file or something. That’d likely help cut down on spam too.
- giarc 8y ago
  I believe you can only monetize once you have 1000 subscribers. However, I think you should re-read article. The problem isn't the video uploaded, it's the commentor.
  - dawnerd 8y ago
    I meant youtube themselves shouldn't monetize unless they're certain that the content is advertiser friendly. They have no problems cutting legit youtubers off from ads, so why can't they also kill ads for uploads from children? It's just been creating problems for them.
    - giarc 8y ago
      >It's just been creating problems for them. It's also been creating a cash cow for them. I also think there is just too much content being uploaded for them to accurately determine if the video is advertiser friendly.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  Another user had a forward-thinking root idea that I think would be a good option for parents who legitimately wanted to share their family videos/let their kids send their friends videos. Private social-network video hosting. Not outside-searchable. You can host your own or maybe pay for another host. Only accessible by invite, etc. Parent configurable, permissions-based access for children (eg. Children cant send invites, only parents and approved members like elder children or trusted relatives). Essentially, it wouldn't involve existing *tubes.
  - 8y ago
ameister14 8y ago
I run ads and have for the last year or two systematically removed any placements involving youtube channels related to children - anything with toys, games, kids, etc. I have done this because after demonetizing a number of videos Google has apparently decided that children's content was ideal for advertisers; it was safe. This was wrong, but clearly nobody in their ads department actually used the targeting systems. There is no way for L'oreal to remove their ads from channels with disturbing comments automatically. They would have to individually find and exclude these placements and build their lists like I have, and I believe they probably have underpaid and either overworked or incompetent people running their targeting so that's unlikely to happen. To be honest I believe ads should not be shown on children's youtube channels at all. Further, rather than reporting a video, I'd like channel creators to be able to report comments and get people banned from commenting on the site as a whole.
fencepost 8y ago
Possibly in response to this article coming out, Youtube also ramped up one of their other things that has popped up in the past - auto-flagging videos with "CP" in the video title, removing channels and in at least one case completely locking associated Google accounts (without apparent human involvement). This hit at least two of the highest-profile Pokemon Go Youtubers this past weekend with videos related to the "Combat Power" of virtual monsters.
glglwty 8y ago
Pedophilia has always been an execuse for taking over people's rights. Good thing tor isn't targeted this time.
Tsubasachan 8y ago
None of this content is CP. Might as well ban children's tv. Or hell dress kids up in burkas. Pedos fap to children. Most of them don't actually do anything illegal. And no icky or gross isn't illegal.

But they can figure out when a video has copyrighted music at 1% volume in the background.

mschuster91 8y ago
Because that is a trivial task as the question "is there licensed music in the track" is binary and really easy to do given a large enough number of fingerprints. Detecting if there is a child in the video is more difficult, but do-able with current ML models. Now, however, determining why there is a child in the video - if it is a family "fail" video or pedo material, for example - via AI is about as impossible as trying to distinguish between satire, hate speech or propaganda via AI. It's not possible at all, as AI will for the near future totally lack context. This distinction will require humans, and this is something not viable at all for fb, youtube, twitter & co, as it is a huge cost... the saving of which is offloaded to society though in form of e.g. undermined democracies or psychological trauma in sexual violence survivors.
- antris 8y ago
  They already have an AI to detect these videos: the recommendation engine mentioned in the article. These videos aren't difficult to find.
  - mschuster91 8y ago
    The "recommendation engine" is a stupid "people searching for x clicked on y" thing. Not intelligent at all. And banning keywords won't help, that's just whack-a-mole'ing.
  - NathanKP 8y ago
    The recommendation engine doesn't know what the content is or in what way it is similar, it just knows that people who view this video often view this other video. On the bright side the recommendation engine grouping all these videos means that once YouTube identifies one video as inappropriate they can easily use the recommendations to find and delete all the other videos that are also being viewed by the same pedos.
    - shkkmo 8y ago
      > On the bright side the recommendation engine grouping all these videos means that once YouTube identifies one video as inappropriate they can easily use the recommendations to find and delete all the other videos that are also being viewed by the same pedos. That is exactly the point, they have this ability and are not using it. Not even to disable comments.
  - hello_friendos 8y ago
    Some of the videos were up for months, and youtube did nothing to remove them after being asked.
- filesystem 8y ago
  The quick & dirty solution here would be to disable comments if children are detected
  - anonymousab 8y ago
    The problem with that is YouTube's awful history of and approach to false positives. People would be a lot more willing to accept blanket and risky experiments to solve these problems if there was a viable and reliable reconciliatory/redemptive path for when those systems get it wrong. For better or worse, YouTube hasn't focused on scaling that part of their system, so there will be apprehension and scepticism with any approach they take.
  - shkkmo 8y ago
    They could also use their own recommendation engine to flag videos for manual review.
- ErikVandeWater 8y ago
  > Now, however, determining why there is a child in the video It doesn't matter why the child is in the video. The pedophile only cares that there is a child. Videos uploaded with children in them will be exploited, regardless of whether they are legitimate.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    Banning the public from uploading videos featuring children, or worse, deleting those already there, will be extremely unpopular. And I'm not convinced it's necessary.
    - shkkmo 8y ago
      How about disabling comments, proactively deleting illegal content and not helping people find more non-illegal but potentially exploitative content? I feel like you have missed the point. YouTube is actively helping people find this content and making money off of it.
    - zamalek 8y ago
      I honestly don't think you can do anything about pedophiles watching otherwise innocent videos of children. The article claims that there is nudity (via timestamp comments). Separate models could be used to score the video, where a child plus any other potentially sexual content (genitalia, nipples) withholds the video. A withheld video can be appealed (for scenarios such as "breastfeeding tips" or what-have-you), much like copyright strikes, which have an existing process. Obviously the model might have problems discerning between a 17 and 18 year old, but it would catch the most egregious content.
  - ScoutOrgo 8y ago
    So we should just ban all videos of children then?
  - nopriorarrests 8y ago
    In this case we will have to ban children movies (Harry Potter?) and TV channels, which sounds too harsh. As long as child is not performing some sexually suggestive stuff on youtube video ("popsicle challenge", wtf) it is OK, probably.
- illumin8 8y ago
  This is not true. ML can detect kids in videos, and if there was any financial incentive to doing so, Youtube could follow their recommendation graph to know exactly what type of content to ban or restrict commenting on. The reason why they find licensed music in videos is because they have a financial (profit) motive for doing so. Find a licensed track, and get a few fractions of a penny every time someone watches that video. There is no financial incentive to blocking CP, so they don't bother. This is a real shame.
  - tcd 8y ago
    > ML can detect kids in videos It can't detect context, however. >The reason why they find licensed music in videos is because It's technically easier to do so. ML is still new, and it still makes mistakes, this is why people complain about content ID because it takes down videos that are "fair use". Explain to me, Mr Expert, how a ML algorithm can understand the nuance of the law, interpret it flawlessly like a human would (say, in a court of law). Unless you're saying these cases no longer require humans, courts and judges, and ML is at a point where it's _flawless_ and accurate 100% of the time. It's a shame you're so technically weak minded, I thought the Hackernews community would be educated in this regard. Please go read about how ML works before making such comments in the future, they make you look really stupid.
    - illumin8 8y ago
      >> ML can detect kids in videos > It can't detect context, however. You don't actually need to, at least initially. You only need to detect kids, and when you have some threshold of reports on comments on a video where the computer vision algorithm detected kids in the frame that rise to the level a human should take a look, the human can flag the video as containing elements of CP, which would kick in the following: - Deeper ML analysis of the dependency graph of commentors, related videos. - Blacklisting or law enforcement notification for commentors that are violating the law. - Training data that can be used to train more advanced algorithms. Because there is no profit motive to do so, like there is with music licensing, they won't do it. > It's technically easier to do so. I'm not talking about determining context with ML. That is a hard problem, of course. But identifying "child human" with a computer vision algorithm is very simple, then relying on human moderators to initiate the dependency graph traversal. > Please go read about how ML works before making such comments in the future, they make you look really stupid. No need for the ad hominem. I'm not an ML expert, but I understand enough of the basics to know what is possible.
_wmd 8y ago
While content ID is another problem, I agree it is highly convenient the same recommendation system that permits (and enables, and encourages!) this activity can't internally be reused by them to prevent it. They already pay contractors to filter through illegal images, in comparison this seems like.. no pun intended, childsplay The most horrid thought occurred to me while reading this, that somewhere within Google there may be a glossy (autogenerated or otherwise) report detailing exactly how many people are watching these videos and falling into this particular gradient of the recommendation model. Perhaps even read and passed up as too difficult to extract value from by their ads team. A company of this size (YouTube, not just Google) couldn't possibly be oblivious to this
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  If they have that segment I doubt it would be difficult to extract value from them.... Just advertise Spy Cameras, Thailand Vacation Packages, and Annual Passes to Disneyland, no ?
jdminhbg 8y ago
I know, it's crazy. It's almost like the feasibility of a task is unrelated to the importance of a task.

css 8y ago

> Enter “twister girl” and autocomplete suggests “little girl twister in skirt” Jesus… Credit where credit is due, I learned about this from MattsWhatItIs: https://youtu.be/O13G5A5w5P0 https://youtu.be/O13G5A5w5P0 Which is similar to the recent videos PayMoneyWubby has been exposing: https://youtu.be/5PmphkNDosg https://youtu.be/5PmphkNDosg and https://youtu.be/M78rlxEMBxk https://youtu.be/M78rlxEMBxk It reminds me of a darker version of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate.

Murdoch 8y ago
This issue was brought to YouTube's attention by another content creator. They say they are working to disable comments on some videos and delete some accounts. Its tough when kids upload innocent videos and it is the comment sections that become filled with predators. I do want to say this MattsWhatItIs guy appears to be motivated by attention and ignored the fact that Youtube was looking into this and continues to push for people to go after advertisers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLsYQYHHqoM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLsYQYHHqoM
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  Frankly, getting advertisers involved is probably the best way to get actual meaningful action taken.
- 908087 8y ago
  It's convenient that simply disabling comments allows youtube to continue monetizing these videos while pretending pedos aren't their main audience.
- anonymousab 8y ago
  People likely feel that they are not doing (or spending) anywhere near enough on the problem. Particularly because many of the gripes with YouTube have gotten deliberately worse, yet the situation with stuff like creepy Elsa videos (and by extension, creepy comments and suspected pedophile activity) has not improved for years. The 'adpocalypse' showed that the best way to enact any meaningful change on YouTube is to get the advertisers riled up. So that's the lever they're going to focus on. I think it's always going to be a double-edged sword at best.

matz1 8y ago

So, do you want them to ban all child video ?

ceejayoz 8y ago
Frankly, that might not be a bad idea. There are some interesting consent issues surrounding this sort of thing. As an example of why, this much-criticized article where a mommy blogger's fourth grader discovered she'd been the subject of a bunch of columns: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/01/03/my-daughter-asked-me-stop-writing-about-motherhood-heres-why-i-cant-do-that/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/01/03/my-daugh...
- TACIXAT 8y ago
  Banning children from uploading to large public sources sounds extreme but it could actually create really good market conditions for host-your-own services. A group of friends could have their own video host.
  - 52-6F-62 8y ago
    You mean like a containerized version of *tube people accessed as a service run for them, or encouraging people to actively host and maintain their own? Maybe an ideal service would offer both— paid private and shareable containerized hosting and an open-source or free-download host-your-own option.
chooseaname 8y ago
Yes. And keep parents from uploading them too: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/when-kids-realize-their-whole-life-already-online/582916/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/when-...
- micah94 8y ago
  Many of the children are uploading the videos themselves.

INTPenis 8y ago

Speaking of pedos hiding in plain sight; around 16 years ago there was a Verizon bust in Canada of some pedo networks. One such network of sites fled to a new web host that had not heard of the preceding events. They came to their new host as a BSD consultancy firm. It wasn't until the new host stumbled upon their HTTP traffic that they noticed some strange domain names. And later found a whole network of message boards setup for "people" talking about grooming children for sex. On the surface it was a legitimate business, under the surface it was horrible. They were kicked out of their new hosting and looking at their domains a few weeks later they had found a new home with PRQ. :( This youtube stuff is also sad because these kids are uploading their videos with no other intent than to have fun. And now someone has to explain to them that their videos will receive special treatment because of sickos online. Maybe leave the videos alone and teach kids not to answer strangers online instead?

barbecue_sauce 8y ago
BSD as in Berkeley Software Distribution?
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  Business. Sustainability. Development. I think... "S", could be for Services.
UnFleshedOne 8y ago
If you want plain sight you need not look further than Catholic Church.

srkmno 8y ago

The media will always sensualize the tiniest flase positive/negative that will always exist, not because they don't understand how this stuff works but because generating outrage is their business model, and if they can show how their "journalism" can affect change by getting advertisers to drop one of their most hated rivals that's just gravy.

908087 8y ago
Generating outrage is still a cleaner business model than monetizing pre-teen crotch shots, which is the business model you seem to be defending here.
- robertrobot 8y ago
  That's a false dichotomy brother.
- srkmno 8y ago
  I'm saying that YouTube is successfully blocking 99.9999% of cases but journalists make their living by that 0.0001% context and nuance be damned.
- NathanKP 8y ago
  That's a pretty bold strawman argument. I don't think anyone is arguing that YouTube should be monetizing pre-teen crotch shots. The way I read it OP is pointing out a definite trend in which the other mainstream medias like to jump on any situation that they can use to attack YouTube and YouTube's ad revenue. Wired in particular has a weird fascination with criticizing YouTube and YouTubers. It's a pretty transparent attack by one media that is losing attention against another media that has the attention. You can see it to some extent with how other media formats report on Facebook as well. It's not just a war for attention, its a war to reduce the ad budget that gets spent on the competing platform. In particular for Wired making articles like "Pewdiepie is a nazi" or "YouTube is full of paedophiles" isn't just about reporting, or even clickbait to attract views. They also specifically mention ads in these type of articles as a way to hurt the bottom line ad revenue of YouTube by trying to scare advertisers away from advertising on YouTube.

Udik 8y ago

Although I understand that the comments section under the videos can be problematic for various reasons, what is the intrinsic issue with people being turned on by kids videos? It's probably the worst sexual preference to have in terms of societal acceptance, but as long as it doesn't cause any harm to others- i.e., it's limited to watching innocent youtube videos- it seems perfectly fine.

LVDOVICVS 8y ago
Turn yourself in now.
sam0x17 8y ago
This -- people need to differentiate between "I think this is disgusting, but there is nothing illegal about this" and "this is illegal". You can't have your cake and eat it, in that you can't have a (relatively) free society with freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and not cater to pedofiles in some way. This is the (totally worth it) price we pay for not having systematic state censorship.
- krapp 8y ago
  >You can't have your cake and eat it, in that you can't have a (relatively) free society with freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and not cater to pedofiles in some way. Maybe, but you can still criticize a platform for a monetization algorithm that optimizes for pedophiles, collecting the cash and looking the other way. Although I think that, in doing so, we shouldn't absolve parents of their own responsibility, since often adults are pimping their children out for the views.
  - sam0x17 8y ago
    Youtube basically lost the monetization battle when it legitimized the view that advertisers should have any sort of say in what content gets shown next to their ads. 10-15 years ago, that concept didn't exist in the online advertising space, publishers were first class citizens, and advertisers didn't get any say in anything and would get banned more often than publishers for not meeting advertiser standards (which I don't even think are a thing anymore). Now it's completely switched. Catering to advertisers is rapidly killing youtube, and a large portion of the web as a viable platform for free expression. You are right, but by criticizing said platform, you are giving advertisers more leverage and basically helping to even further whitewash an already heavily censored internet. It's not just children. Look at the comments on any video and you'll see all kinds of abusive/sexual-harrassment comments. It has always been like this, and it will always be like this unless you want an algorithm to detect the "offensiveness" of your comments, which will result in certain topics being completely banned unintentionally (think China's handling of the term"tiananmen square massacre" if you want a working example of this). And the worst part is, it's essentially advertisers that get to decide what content is OK for you to view. I'd rather take the lack of censorship any day and pay a subscription, thank you.

unclebucknasty 8y ago

The somewhat overt nature of this brings a question to mind: We know that our social networks have been invaded by foreign adversaries to sow chaos and division. Is there any research as to whether they've also sought to undermine us via promoting the degradation of our moral values as a society? At a minimum, it would reduce our moral standing in the world, and potentially produce a numbing to or higher tolerance for other types of moral deficiency in which they might seek to engage. In general, it would be demoralizing to see this constant stream of depravity in your own culture. Seems it would be potentially very effective and consistent with other lines of attack we've seen.

jerf 8y ago
Not much need to hypothesize, it's sourced to the point Wikipedia has an article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures Wikipedia does not explicitly call out moral warfare, but if you keep Googling on that term you can find a lot of chatter about it, of various levels of veracity. It's only a baby step beyond what is very firmly established; I don't find it hard to believe.
- unclebucknasty 8y ago
  Yeah, I'm familiar with active measures in general. What you referenced is the well-publicized piece I mentioned. I'm specifically talking about the morality line of attack, and whether there is similarly well-documented/sourced discussion of same (that is, beyond random Googling for which results might also include disinformation).
  - jerf 8y ago
    There is stuff that passes my credibility filter for "probably true", and it comes up early in the web searches, specific statements about specific policies from first-hand sources of people in the relevant positions in the cold war, or at least I've seen no challenges that they aren't who they say they are. The people/entities who would publicize this and make it "officially official" have every motive in the world not to, so you're not going to find something like a 60 Minutes report on it or anything. (I think that for all the "officially official" sources casually commit lies of commission all the time, their true power is in the lies of omission.) I have to apologize for the vagueness, but the HN gestalt would not particularly care to examine the details of this matter too closely. It would result in... nontrivial cognitive dissonance.

freeflight 8y ago

This is yet another of those "Omg pedophiles everywhere!" hysteria cases where people are too busy being all freaked out without actually looking at the facts. Ain't helping that the guy who "discovered" this claims it is some kind of "YouTube wormhole" you supposedly fall into and never ever can escape from. Even tho he pretty much did everything to make the results come out as they did (fresh YouTube account, using a VPN, looking up content that's already considered as "soft-core" for many users). But the reality is that these videos show nothing illegal or really that out of the ordinary. The fact that some people derive sexual pleasure from them, is something that can never be stopped unless you introduce something akin to mass-scale thought/mind-control. Because before it was YouTube videos or the Internet it was plain old children underwear catalogs printed on paper and without these, or YouTube videos, those people would just do a Google picture search of "childrens underwear" and get unlimited pictures of children in equally revealing poses as in those YouTube videos. What to do about that? How to "fix" any of this? Particularly in an age where becoming a "YouTube personality/influencer" is increasingly peddled as some kind of viable choice of occupation for younger people and even children [0]? [0] https://www.businessinsider.de/ryan-toysreview-7-year-old-makes-22-million-per-year-youtube-2018-12?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.de/ryan-toysreview-7-year-old-ma...

crushcrashcrush 8y ago
Your comment is highly disturbing. I don't have enough Karma to downvote you, but please take a long walk and come back and read what you've written.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  As disgusting as the thoughts and feelings might be, we shouldn't be trying to regulate what people think and feel inside their own heads. That's a level of tyranny that would be a living hell. It's also corrosive to society to create a situation where everyone is paranoid about the "other" hiding in plain sight among us. This paranoia over internal mental states is precisely the kind of oppression which was directed against Jewish people and against homosexuals in the past. This is precisely what was called out in the "Have you no Decency?" moment where McCarthy's fall started. In 2019, outrage mongering should automatically trigger skepticism -- especially if the subject matter is extra lurid and stigmatizing.

jl2718 8y ago

Stop monetizing kids.

908087 8y ago
As a result of a few close friends having children, I was recently introduced to certain channels run by parents who seem to have had children specifically to be used as youtube props. It's pretty sad. It's probably safe to assume child "influencers" have an even rougher road ahead of them than many child actors did. I wonder how many or few of the parents who are making a living doing this are putting money their children earned them aside for their children? Based on the sizes of the houses and pools in the background rapidly increasing over time in a couple channels my niece watches, I'm guessing not many.
umvi 8y ago
It's bad when parents get hooked on the cash flow they receive from exploiting their children online https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FamilyOFive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FamilyOFive
dandare 8y ago
Also, stop advertising to kids. Experts in psychology and whatelse, with huge budgets, work tirelessly to make your kid intensely crave something it does not need.

duado 8y ago

Well, I can guarantee you that YouTube will solve this problem. Why? Because major advertisers are pausing all advertising on YouTube. The only leverage we have against the Internet giants is their money supply.

giarc 8y ago

Lines like this tell me the author has no idea how advertising works these days "The videos are also being monetised by YouTube, including pre-roll adverts from Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Fortnite, Grammarly, L’Oreal, Maybelline, Metro: Exodus, Peloton and SingleMuslims.com." These companies don't choose to advertise on these videos specifically. Youtube is just placing the ads there based upon the viewer etc. I imagine there are some exceptions for high profile youtubers and companies that pay directly to display their ads prior to their videos, but the accounts in question don't likely fall into that category.

chillydawg 8y ago
Companies do not get to play that card in their defence. They know full well they are scatter gunning and that some small percentage of their ads will end up next to/in front of awful content. They know this - they've seen it happen time and time again. They continue to do it because it's cheaper to do so and occasionally take some PR flack and then blame Youtube. Ultimately - your ad, your problem. If you value your brand so poorly that you don't care where you advertise, this is what happens.
- giarc 8y ago
  My issue is that authors often try to name and shame the companies as if they had some say. Companies should definitely reach out to Youtube or their marketing company to correct the problem but every single advertiser could have their ads shown before that video. That's how the ad network works.
  - behringer 8y ago
    They are at fault because they choose to pay youtube to be placed in front of videos designed for pedos. There are plenty of advertisers that pay the content creators directly for in-video ads, there's already a model where you can choose exactly what kind of content you want your ad featured in. I'll say it again, these advertisers are choosing where to advertise.

dawnerd 8y ago

Some of these comments here are disgusting. I thought HN would be better than this. YouTube could start requiring validation for uploaders before they’re monitized or allow comments. Require a credit card on file or something. That’d likely help cut down on spam too.

giarc 8y ago
I believe you can only monetize once you have 1000 subscribers. However, I think you should re-read article. The problem isn't the video uploaded, it's the commentor.
- dawnerd 8y ago
  I meant youtube themselves shouldn't monetize unless they're certain that the content is advertiser friendly. They have no problems cutting legit youtubers off from ads, so why can't they also kill ads for uploads from children? It's just been creating problems for them.
  - giarc 8y ago
    >It's just been creating problems for them. It's also been creating a cash cow for them. I also think there is just too much content being uploaded for them to accurately determine if the video is advertiser friendly.
52-6F-62 8y ago
Another user had a forward-thinking root idea that I think would be a good option for parents who legitimately wanted to share their family videos/let their kids send their friends videos. Private social-network video hosting. Not outside-searchable. You can host your own or maybe pay for another host. Only accessible by invite, etc. Parent configurable, permissions-based access for children (eg. Children cant send invites, only parents and approved members like elder children or trusted relatives). Essentially, it wouldn't involve existing *tubes.
- 8y ago

ameister14 8y ago

I run ads and have for the last year or two systematically removed any placements involving youtube channels related to children - anything with toys, games, kids, etc. I have done this because after demonetizing a number of videos Google has apparently decided that children's content was ideal for advertisers; it was safe. This was wrong, but clearly nobody in their ads department actually used the targeting systems. There is no way for L'oreal to remove their ads from channels with disturbing comments automatically. They would have to individually find and exclude these placements and build their lists like I have, and I believe they probably have underpaid and either overworked or incompetent people running their targeting so that's unlikely to happen. To be honest I believe ads should not be shown on children's youtube channels at all. Further, rather than reporting a video, I'd like channel creators to be able to report comments and get people banned from commenting on the site as a whole.

fencepost 8y ago

Possibly in response to this article coming out, Youtube also ramped up one of their other things that has popped up in the past - auto-flagging videos with "CP" in the video title, removing channels and in at least one case completely locking associated Google accounts (without apparent human involvement). This hit at least two of the highest-profile Pokemon Go Youtubers this past weekend with videos related to the "Combat Power" of virtual monsters.

glglwty 8y ago

Pedophilia has always been an execuse for taking over people's rights. Good thing tor isn't targeted this time.

Tsubasachan 8y ago

None of this content is CP. Might as well ban children's tv. Or hell dress kids up in burkas. Pedos fap to children. Most of them don't actually do anything illegal. And no icky or gross isn't illegal.