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Nestle, Disney Pull YouTube Ads, Joining Furor Over Child Videos
- hombre_fatal 8y ago>On Sunday, Matt Watson, a video blogger, posted a 20-minute clip detailing how comments on YouTube were used to identify certain videos in which young girls were in activities that could be construed as sexually suggestive, such as posing in front of a mirror and doing gymnastics. I looked at some of the videos that appeared in his report and it's basically family videos of young girls, the same kind of videos my own sisters would shoot with our dad's camcorder. His first example are videos that come up when you search https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=orbeez+bath https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=orbeez+bath. I'm sure these videos do attract some weirdos in the comments, and in the next paragraph Youtube says that they want to moderate that activity, but what else do you do here? Ban kids uploading a video of their innocent pool party because some creeps might enjoy it? The youtuber's video includes the provocative phrase "Sexual Exploitation of Children", but I only saw harmless videos of kids having fun when I looked at his own examples. He also focuses a lot on the comments themselves which is a much different argument.
- justinsaccount 8y ago> Ban kids Yes.
- darawk 8y agoYou want to ban videos of children from the internet because pedophiles might be aroused by them?
- amagumori 8y agoi mean, another angle is the parents that are posting videos of their kids online are not asking their kids for consent first, and the kids may be themselves unable to give consent. requiring videos of children to be unlisted seems completely reasonable to me.
- hackinthebochs 8y agoLet's be clear here, many if not most of these videos are being posted by the kids themselves. Everyone wants to be the next youtube star. There are enough gymnastics youtube stars that other kids try to emulate them.
- riffic 8y agoHow about we turn it up a notch and also take a stab at malnourishment and overpopulation? A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food
- riffic 8y agoThis was an allusion to A Modest Proposal, you uncultured fools!
- baxtr 8y agoI think EU upload filter are a perfect solution!
- darawk 8y agoHow is that a solution?
- malvosenior 8y agoI don't think Youtube can or should do much of anything here, but why on earth as a parent would you let your child upload something like that to a public website (or even worse, upload it yourself)? There are a ton of weirdo creeps out there and putting your child's private videos on Youtube of all places seems like terrible parenting.
- ravenstine 8y agoActually instilling morals and enforcing boundaries as a parent is an unpopular opinion these days.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Sendotsh 8y agoI actually think it might be technical naivety? Eg families know that you can share videos on YouTube, so they want to share their family videos to other friends and family, and don't understand permission settings and other such intricacies. Like most people here likely do, I run tech support for my entire extended family, and a very very common theme is trying to share photos/video with family and friends. Apple locks down iCloud so it's only easy to share with other iDevice users, and YouTube makes it REALLY easy to initially upload a video (drag onto this box, or just share from your phone/tablet video browser) but then doesn't clearly explain the different options in the processing screen, etc etc. They also don't understand the repurcussions. They're not on reddit reading about Elsagate, they're not aware of the deep seedy underbelly of the Interwebs outside of "people buy drugs on the darknet" because they saw it on the 7:30 Report. They think the Internet is Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Amazon. It's extremely easy for technically proficient people to underestimate how complicated and overwhelming these "simple" (for us) tasks can be to non-techies.
- lancesells 8y agoI've never uploaded a Youtube video but wouldn't the parents or the kids see these comments? Don't you specifically have to turn on monetization?
- ceejayoz 8y ago> Ban kids uploading a video of their innocent pool party because some creeps might enjoy it? That'd likely be seen as an overreach now, but twenty years from now we may wish we'd done that. In the meantime, making them only visible to an approved list of friends/family seems like a reasonable step for video of or published by minors. Maybe you put together a "child actor" exemption where they parents can moderate it for public access.
- simcop2387 8y agoSo his examples might be quite tame and understandable. But there's a lot of others that aren't there's a reddit community that's been documenting channels that have these kinds of videos, https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/ EDIT: some of the worst I've seen are usually involving Micky or Minnie mouse doing drugs and other things, while containing a bunch of keywords intended to get into recommendations. https://i.redd.it/i5rvr5ad9ug21.jpg https://i.redd.it/i5rvr5ad9ug21.jpg
- mc32 8y agoI hear ya. It’s one of those things that are like Janus and are two sided. But imagine: store employees make a peep hole in dressing rooms. Sure parents help their children change, depending on age, it’s all innocent, but an unsupervised uninvited stranger is a little different, right? Same with these kids’ videos. Now of course a good question is who’s uploading, thd kids or the parents? Parents should know better than make family vids avail to all, Google should do a better job of figuring out if a kid’s old enough to upload if the parent isn’t involved in this. They may even default to “private”/unlisted if they can auto determine the uploader is a kid, and advise parents if content, though innocent, contains minors (this should be default for parents anyway because although they have right to make decisions for their kids, they should think hard before putting their kids out there on the internet, if nothing else for the privacy of their kids')
- minimaxir 8y ago> but what else do you do here? For your example ("the same kind of videos my own sisters would shoot with our dad's camcorder") there are two remedies: 1) Upload the video as unlisted, so it will not appear in recommendation systems and you can send the link to your friends/family. 2) Disable comments on the video. Public content is a bit more dangerous to leave unchecked in 2019 than in 2009.
- hombre_fatal 8y agoSure, but that's an uploader's decision they can already make today. It didn't prevent this drama. The suggestion here is that Youtube should do something about it, and I'm asking what that solution specifically looks like.
- gyrgtyn 8y agoBetter defaults
- minikites 8y agoCooperate with the authorities to find and investigate people who post creepy comments? You already can't post bomb threats online without getting an investigation.
- stickfigure 8y agoBomb threats are illegal. Creepy comments are not. This may be an awkward position to take in public, but I'm not comfortable with the idea of criminalizing "creepy comments", especially on the internet.
- nopriorarrests 8y ago>but what else do you do here? I don't have an answer, but considering the size of Disney and Nestle cumulative marketing budget, youtube engineers will be hard pressed to do something.
- Laforet 8y agoYoutube is not facebook, and judging by the continued neglect of youtube's comment system I doubt their ability to add fine grained privacy control, especially since they abandoned Google+ integration. This isn't a new problem as their comment subsystem has been a usability nightmare in years. When a comment thread geta to a certain length, following the conversation and pinging specific replies become increasingly difficult. The late John "Totalbiscuit" Bain had to turn off comment on all his videos and direct all discussions to Reddit, because once the comments start to get rowdy it's impossible to moderate.
- AnaniasAnanas 8y agoBoth a usability nightmare and a sanity nightmare. The content of the comments there is about as bad as facebook's. To be honest if they removed the ability to comment then nothing of value would be lost.
- komali2 8y agoComments on youtube are far far worse than on facebook, imo. Hit up any tow truck channel and you'll see overt, unhindered racism, for hundreds of comments.
- alexis_fr 8y agoIt’s just that you don’t agree with it. There is a big chiasm between censored internet (Facebook, newspapers) where everything is polished but only reflects 25% of the population, and free internet (the rest) where you get an actual image of diversity. It’s just that you don’t like this diversity and you want them not to exist, but their points are, if not correct, at least vastly unadressed because the visible society despises them. I defend men’s rights. All of MR forums are underground. They’re not happy, they’re unadressed and despised by society. And that’s 49% of population. Saying men’s rights are a non-issue which should not be adressed and deserves the censorship it has in the above-ground internet is, by nature, discriminatory towards men. It’s just an example, but you won’t be able to keep the pressure cooker very long.
- Apocryphon 8y agoMonetizing mundane home videos with ads is a creepy and bizarre concept to begin with.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoWorse is making children work so they can earn money as influencers. Don't see G lifting a finger there.
- rchaud 8y agoChild paegeantry is a multi-million dollar business, and has been for decades. Everyone is part of the problem, starting from the parents who push their kids into the public spotlight, to the local media that provides coverage of this stuff, encouraging other fame-seeking parents to try to get in on it.
- tathougies 8y agoIt's literally what TV shows like AFV did.
- Apocryphon 8y agoNotice I used the qualifier "mundane." Funny potentially meme videos are one thing, unexceptional videos of kids' talent shows or just doing everyday things should be not be advertised. Ideally they should be unlisted or posted to Facebook or some other social network that isn't broadcast to the entirety of the web.
- anth_anm 8y agoSome posted a video of a guy who was making this same sort of video, but about a 13 year old doing ASMR. That's actually creepy. I don't think we can stop pedos leering at kids online. In person you can tell them to get lost or call the cops.
- on_and_off 8y agoI saw the video you are talking about. The worst part is that I disagree with his claim, or rather I don't think he makes a strong argument that these videos are _intentionally_ sexual. It looks to me like a kid doing kid stuff. I might have made the same videos at her age _but_ it is still sexualized by some people. I am not sure what's a good solution to that could be. According to these new articles, it looks like any video showing a kid is potentially sexualized. Banning all kids on youtube look a bit extreme and would raise its own set of problems. And at this point, just having a kid in any movie/series has the same consequences So yeah .. not sure we can stop that. And if you are sharing timestamp of kids doing squats, you are probably too far gone that just asking you to see a psychiatrist is enough.
- Yntec 8y agoOkay, can you reword that? What is wrong with kids doing squats? If nothing, then, what is wrong with timestamping kids doing squats? The only thing I see wrong here is the sexualization, but it'd be us doing it if we assume the reason of the timestamp. Compare: Video of people playing soccer, someone adds a timestamp to a part when a guy passes the ball to another guy, would you think the timestamp was created because of sexual arousal and tell they need to see a psychiatrist? How is kid doing squats different?
- hackinthebochs 8y agoIt's about context. The context establishes the intent.
- Yntec 8y ago
- dontbenebby 8y ago>I'm sure these videos do attract some weirdos in the comments, and in the next paragraph Youtube says that they want to moderate that activity, but what else do you do here? Ban kids uploading a video of their innocent pool party because some creeps might enjoy it? What about topless babies? What about the rights of the children? Maybe they should have the right to wait and decide, upon adulthood, whether they want to share these videos rather than have their parents blithely allow weirdos to leer at and comment on them.
- tomp 8y agoWhy just children though? Why not everyone? If someone uploads an embarrassing video of me without my consent, I don’t see why it would matter whether I’m a child or an adult...
- robbrown451 8y agoWell then you also need to make sure you don't take them outside. Especially not to a swimming pool, or let them participate in gymnastics. There could be creeps present, thinking bad thoughts.
- umvi 8y agoInternet brings this to a massive, billion+ sized audience, though. Say the rate of pedophilia is 1 in a million (I just made that number up). That means there are, on average, 0 creeps watching your kids at gymnastics meets and pools in real life. However, upload as a public video to youtube, and like flies to honey, hundreds of creeps will gravitate toward the video.
- robbrown451 8y agoWell I can see the number of views. They aren't high. The one that got ~700 views was probably because the title said something about "upside down on monkey bars," but she was wearing jeans, so I don't care. I doubt anyone was gratified. Pretty sure none of the videos I have posted have a billion views. And a creep in real life can easily follow you home.
- jerf 8y ago"Ban kids uploading a video of their innocent pool party because some creeps might enjoy it?" Given everything else YouTube already does, I seriously, no sarcasm, don't see this as a particularly problematic solution. As ceejayoz pointed out, there's some thorny consent issues involved here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19209766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19209766 (ceejayoz' point isn't much larger than my summary of it, but I wanted to give credit. I think it's a good point.) Sometimes scale brings things like this. I have to admit giving a smaller, specialty service a niche to exist in doesn't exactly bother me, either.
- pgrote 8y agoI upload unlisted videos to share with family. I batch and upload them on a monthly basis. Never had an issue with Youtube and my family videos. Last month one video was my daughter fully clothed in the bathroom dumping a cup of water on my son in the bathtub and both laughing. You could only see his head and chest. It was 10 seconds long and funny play between young siblings. It was instantly and automatically flagged, removed and a strike placed against me for going against community guidelines. I had 40 characters to appeal, but it is automated since the response was instantaneous. There are other videos of kids dumping water on each other ... even when both are in the tub. An email asking what guideline I violated to youtube support has gone unanswered. To me, if Youtube is automatically, instantly flagging my video, there is no reason they cannot automatically flag and remove the videos in Matt Watson's video, especially if they are public and are attracting a wide range of comments. Don't get me wrong, it's Youtube's pool, so their rules. They can choose the content they want.
- brlewis 8y agoThey sure can. They removed a video of mine for copyright because of background music in the environment where I was shooting.
- freeflight 8y agoWhich is a completely different, and rather trivial, problem compared to "automatically detect the age of people in a video and/or if they are doing something sexual". The first is a mere process of comparison, while the latter requires quite a few levels of subjective abstraction.
- dleslie 8y agoThe issue isn't so much the content of the videos; for the most part, they could be altogether innocent and within the guidelines that YouTube, and the law, requires. The issue is the community that has developed around them. > Ban kids uploading a video of their innocent pool party because some creeps might enjoy it? What about topless babies? The children are unable to agree to the terms and conditions set forth by YouTube, and sadly, there is a possibility that their parent or guardian is aware of the exploitative nature of the community. So, perhaps yes?
- AnaniasAnanas 8y agoHow is anyone being exploited here exactly? > The children are unable to agree to the terms and conditions set forth by YouTube Which means that children should not be able to upload any kind of video to youtube, but it should be fine if they upload it to say an ftp server for public domain videos that does not impose any terms and conditions, right?
- dleslie 8y agoAdvertisement dollars are being accrued via the attention of pedophiles. That's clearly exploitative.
- baddox 8y ago> it's basically family videos of young girls, the same kind of videos my own sisters would shoot with our dad's camcorder. Your family camcorder videos probably weren't made available for checkout at the public library, filed under "young girls doing gymnastics" in the library's card catalog. If they were, I imagine your family and many members of the public would be creeped out or upset. > but what else do you do here? Require (or maybe automatically force, if implemented well) those videos to be set to Visiblity: Unlisted. I don't think anyone would be upset with sharing these links with family.
- acl2149 8y agoNot sure that analogy makes sense. YouTube makes it pretty clear you are publishing your video to the public when you upload the file. You actually have to confirm the video is going to be public. It's not like YouTube is raiding the family archives for the content
- ipsum2 8y ago> YouTube makes it pretty clear you are publishing your video to the public when you upload the file After working in tech for long enough, you realize that no one reads anything, even if its absolutely clear in the UI. And they will blame you for it.
- blaze33 8y agoYes, indeed! : Myth #1: People read on the web https://uxmyths.com/post/647473628/myth-people-read-on-the-web https://uxmyths.com/post/647473628/myth-people-read-on-the-w... I always have a hard time explaining to people carefully writing pagewalls that throwing out 90% of it would actually be more effective...
- tobr 8y agoThings are not clear just because they have been spelled out in text. I don’t think this has anything to do with tech, except that tech tends to be full of abstract concepts that are difficult to understand.
- itronitron 8y agoYouTube should just disable comments on all videos
- jaimex2 8y agoI agree. They provide nothing constructive.
- Noumenon72 8y agoUnless you're unaware of whether it is, in fact, 2019. YouTube should just delete every comment with the current year in it.
- ataturk 8y agoI don't know, there's fewer and fewer places online where I can speak my mind. HN limits me to two posts every 4 hours. These forums were supposed to be a marketplace of ideas, not some echo chamber or one-way communication. What kind of technological terror are we building?
- nopriorarrests 8y ago>I only saw harmless videos of kids having fun when I looked at his own examples. Have you seen this -- https://youtu.be/M78rlxEMBxk?t=364 https://youtu.be/M78rlxEMBxk?t=364 ?
- hombre_fatal 8y agoMy issue is that whenever the topic of "child exploitation" comes up, there's always a lack of specifics. Both the specifics of what we're actually referring to and the specifics of an actual solution. Instead, everyone (like every media outlet and internet comment) casts a vote against "child exploitation". Who wouldn't? And the discussion stops there. "Whatever they're doing, it needs to stop!" For example, I bet most people aren't thinking "whispering girl" or "family video of daughters playing in the pool" when they hear the phrase "child exploitation". And maybe most people think Youtube is no place for those videos, fair enough. But the taboo subject and the lack of specifics creates an incredibly charged and blind environment that makes it hard to have a real discussion. So let's be specific here: what kind of action should be taken against this whispering girl's video and what kind of policy does Youtube need to have at scale?
- nopriorarrests 8y agoLets be specific. My first question -- so, 12 y.o. girl being dressed in police uniform and acting like in an opening of a cheesy porn movie is your definition of "just kids having fun"?
- 1024core 8y agoBut are you sure that no one on this planet would consider it as "kids having fun"? YT is a global medium. Just because you (or even the majority of people) are offended, it doesn't mean that everyone should be.
- fuzz4lyfe 8y agoA 12 year old girl, whispering in a sexual manner, wearing a stripper style police outfit, saying things like "I need to leave for my tinder date tonight" and "this is never happening" while pointing at the camera and herself. (and that's just the first 30 seconds) I'm sorry If you think that's "kids having fun" you belong on a cross. Edit (more details on exactly why this is wrong): It's shot in the style of POV porn videos that are popular today, the driver is male (why not female if the purpose is not sexual), his name is used infrequently as possible (don't want to ruin the immersion of the viewers), she holds up handcuffs and suggests that she "might have to use them on you", the outfit either doesn't fit or is purposefully open in her chest area, she is wearing exaggerated makeup and has press on nails in a manner fitting of a central casting prostitute. It's about as extreme as you can get without the FBI coming knocking on your door. I'm a atheist and I'm praying that someone, somewhere in law enforcement is keeping a close eye on her. Poor girl.
- benj111 8y agoOne thing my partner and I disagree about is taking pictures of our kids in the bath or paddling pool, on the basis they might end up in the public domain somewhere. My personal opinion is that it's the other guys problem, if they want to sexualise images of my kids, if I have to self sensor, we've already lost. But as my partner points out principles don't count for much if you've got pedos trading pictures of your kids, so.....?
- kelnos 8y agoI don't think _taking_ photos should be a problem, but what do you do with them afterward? I see people posting photos and videos of their children in public Instagram accounts all the time, and I think that's a terrible thing to do. Not because creeps might get off on them (though of course that's bad), but because it shows that the parents -- who have been entrusted to make decisions on behalf of their minor children -- are showing a distinct lack of respect and care for their children's privacy. I don't have kids, but if I eventually do have any, I will never post photos or videos of them on IG, FB, YT, etc. I might privately share some things via better-protected, private-by-default channels (email, messaging apps, possibly private sharing on something like Google Photos), but that's it. This isn't about self censorship; this is about understanding what these public services are about, and making responsible decisions about what I do and don't post.
- Yntec 8y agoI guess you should keep your kids locked in your house as well, since the outside is full of strangers that could look at them in the streets. And the only thing worse than someone looking at photos or videos of your kids is seeing your kids live, because they exist, are visible, and people have eyes. I think the solution is to create a new kid of clothing, that covers the kid wholly, no inch of skin to be shown, that is put whenever the kid needs to be seen in public, to end this terrible invasion of the kid's privacy whenever anyone takes a look at them outside.
- Yntec 8y agoAs someone that found about this "wormhole" long time ago, I was very surprised about this video. Because all I saw was a cute girl stretching doing her gimnastics, and I found her cute, so I would watch something similar later on. I found it really weird that he thinks those videos are an abomination, because, there's videos like these of cats being cute, and then Youtube algorithm is going show nothing but cute cat videos. Are we going the be escandalized because some people might have zoophilia and use those videos to masturbate or something? It's ridiculous, at some point he shows his screen full of innocent little girl videos, and acts as if it's the most disgusting thing. Little girls being disgusting. I don't get it. I never read the comments, but I never imagined pedophiles looking at these videos at all, because, I expected them to be looking at actually sexual stuff, or whatever. So there's this video of a cute little girl showing how she decorated her room and it has millions of views, am I supposed to believe that there were millions of people on there seeing sexual content where there was none? The saddest part of all this was all the comments on the video, agreeing with the guy that "this was awful", calling perfectly fine videos of little girl "softcore porn". If they see an innocent video of a little girl eating ice cream and weird thoughts cross their mind, it's their problem.
- appleflaxen 8y agoIt reminds me of kurt cobain's assessment of those who saw child pornography on the cover of Nevermind: if you see this as sexually suggestive, then you are the pedophile.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- komali2 8y agoIt's not the videos, it's the comments, and the suggestions pushing the commentors to other similar videos with similar comments. Comments like, from "predator133," "@2:33 is what we call came here for," linking to a part of a video where a child is doing the splits or something.
- Noumenon72 8y agoThat doesn't sound like something anyone who wanted to watch child porn would post, right? You want to watch your porn in peace, not get the video taken down and your account tracked by Chris Hansen and the FBI. On a private pedophile forum, sure. Not on YouTube. It sounds more like something someone who wasn't a pedophile would post, because they were trying to get the video taken down or to bait real pedophiles into posting agreement.
- komali2 8y agoWell, we're both working with the same evidence, so, I disagree. I think it's more likely that it's a pedophile, that they're not willing to risk hopping on the dark net, that videos of children on youtube are enough to sexually gratify them without fear of retribution.
- Noumenon72 8y agoSomeone who's not willing to risk hopping on the dark net is smart. Too smart to assume that most people who see a comment from 'predator133' on YouTube will approve of predators. There are neo-Nazi parades of people not afraid of being hated, but there are not, like, "I cheat on my taxes" parades. Too much to lose. And there are a lot of hoaxters, trolls, parodists, and false flaggers out there. Often more of them than the deviants, because the deviants are weird and underground.
- Yntec 8y agoI don't really know what @2:33 is about, but let me take a guess and ask you: would you let actual children see the contents that appear @2:33? And if they did, would they be horrified? If you asked them to describe what was happening on @2:33, would they feel unfomfortable? Or would they give some innocent, mundane description? This is a great test to see if something is dirty or if it's only dirty in your mind. If you have to create an imaginary pedophile in your mind that gets aroused by @2:33, and a whole group of them that are searching Youtube comments to find the timestamp for "what they're looking for", you have to wonder if you're not using some huge leap in logic to arrive to conclusions. Ironically, what this video has shown is that Youtube's system works, as this guy, to make his video, had to go for what seems to be hours of research and after it, he shows the most shocking videos of little girls he was able to find. And there wasn't any nudity, or anything actually implicitly sexual shown. Everything was clean and every timestamp led to family-friendly content. The "worst" thing I saw was the usage of the water emoji, and I'm like, really? People use the water emoji and suddenly you can be very detailed about their sexual orientation and why they timestamp videos or share them? All what is happening on these completely innocent videos could be explained in many ways, thinking the most likely explanation is "that's a pedophile" means the imaginary pedophile in your mind needs to be toned down.
- throwaway-1283 8y agoAs much as I'm not a fan of "big govt" in many cases, I hope there is legislation that prohibits parents from sharing photos, videos, etc. of their kids publicly (e.g. a public IG account, a public YT channel) without consent (e.g. meaning the child would have to be of an age where they can even legally give consent). Children have the right to privacy, and it is crazy how many parents do not think twice before sharing.
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- _coveredInBees 8y agoI feel sorry for kids these days, thinking about how videos and pictures (and plenty of embarassing ones at that) are plastered all over social media by their parents with them having no ability to ever exercise any control on limiting the sharing of the videos and pictures once they are older and potentially bothered/annoyed about it all. That being said, it's hard to really regulate this. When someone has a baby, they usually share a photo in a public manner of the entire family. It's hard to argue that parents shouldn't be able to share any pictures of their family in a public manner. It also would then prevent journalists or anyone for that matter, from taking pictures in public spaces that contained any minors... which starts to get absurd. Hopefully my kids will appreciate that we never posted pictures of them publicly on social media (only shared privately within immediate family). At the very least, it's one less thing they'll have to worry about as they grow up.
- throwaway-1283 8y agoAs a parent you should be able to share to a private FB, a private IG, a private YT account. That's fine, because you presumably have control over who sees those photos (hopefully people you actually know). I'm also not talking about someone sharing a photo publicly with someone else's kid in the background. I just mean as a parent you should need consent to share a video of your kids to a public social media channel. If your kid cannot give consent because they are underage or refuses, then you shouldn't be able to share it.
- anonymousab 8y agoSeveral videos appeared to be re-uploads by people other than the original uploader. I don't think there's an ideal solution. But they'd need some mix of detecting videos that would be prone to these kinds of comments, then subjecting the comments on those videos to higher scrutiny, such as stricter automatic detection/deletion/*(EDIT - Shadowbanning or hiding the comment as a "first pass" seems good) or even manual review. Manually checking everything is impossible without severely hampering the freedom and capabilities of the platform, and automatically detecting everything is not possible without accepting a heck of a lot of false positives. But putting more effort into a mix of the two would be better than what they appear to have been doing so far.
- Pxtl 8y ago> Several videos appeared to be re-uploads by people other than the original uploader. This is very significant. It becomes 1000X more sinister here - it goes from "innocently upload family videos to share" into "steal family videos that are popular with perverts, post them yourself and monetize them". It will be very difficult for YouTube to separate legitimately uploaded family vids that attract perverts from scum who use stolen "innocent" content to pander to perverts.
- tfha 8y agoFor one, you could see if there's more than one family bring uploaded. If one YouTube channel has the same 6 children in it across 10 videos, probably okay. If one channel has a different set of kids every video, maybe not okay.
- Asooka 8y agoYoutube could leverage their existing ContentID system so reuploads of videos that are private are taken down and the accounts locked after three strikes.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Several videos appeared to be re-uploads by people other than the original uploader. Preventing reuploads of videos that aren't explicitly flagged as eligible for that ought to be a trivial application of tools they already have for copyright enforcement, so that aspect of the problem should be trivial to solve.
- ed_elliott_asc 8y agoI have a couple of kids 8 and 5 and I do let them upload videos but I check them first and if there was anything that I thought a pervert might like I edit out first. There is no need for YouTube to have any video of my children a pervert might want to watch.
- movedx 8y agoAn eleven year old shouldn't be uploading content to YouTube. An eleven year old doesn't understand the second or third order consequences of their actions when they upload a video of themselves, along with their friends, trying on bikinis in their bedrooms. If you're under 16, your content, and the uploading of it, should be supervised. Why are we letting our children run free on the Internet? You wouldn't let them run free on a highway and the Internet is just as dangerous but in different ways. I believe YouTube need to implement a system of age verification for content creators. 16+ minimum if you ask me. If the parents do the uploading, whelp, you found your issue (if any arise)
- Mirioron 8y ago>You wouldn't let them run free on a highway and the Internet is just as dangerous but in different ways. Kids here roam across the city unsupervised by age 7-8. This includes highways. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't YouTube require you to be at least 13?
- r3bl 8y ago> Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't YouTube require you to be at least 13? You need to be over 13 (or above, depending on the country) to create an account. There's no limit on the content itself. In my opinion, there is no justifiable use case in which videos of children under 13 should be made publicly-available, but YouTube itself disagrees. Case in point: Ryan ToysReview has 18 million subscribers. YouTube thinks it's okay because the videos are uploaded and edited by his parents, while I think it's absurd that anyone makes an income based on sharing videos of their children publicly.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> YouTube thinks it's okay because the videos are uploaded and edited by his parents, while I think it's absurd that anyone makes an income based on sharing videos of their children publicly. Movies and TV shows starting children are not unheard of as commercial endeavors. I'm not sure why with YouTube as a viable monetizable video platform, parent-driven productions on that platform are fundamentally any worse of an idea.
- dopamean 8y agoI have looked into this before and one thing I noticed is that the videos with the creepiest comments tend to be reposts. The videos that actually belong to the kids and families who posted them often have their comments disabled. Perhaps YouTube could do more to delete the reposted videos attracting so much perverted attention.
- tathougies 8y agoI think this is a really good idea!
- beerlord 8y agoThe problem is not the videos being there, its the advertisments next to them. Youtube simply needs to move to a proper gatekeeping model around monetisation, requiring human review and biannual review checks. Start it at 10,000 subscribers to avoid being overwhelmed. Prompt once-off approval for 'viral' trending videos from new channels (even if the advertising money goes completely to Youtube). The internet is maturing and existing gatekeeping models are too lax. Same thing with games allowed onto Steam. Now any idiot with a phone can upload something - previously you needed a computer and decent knowledge to do that. Limiting new uploads from new accounts to 720p30 max until they hit 1,000 subs or pay a $100 'starter fee' will save on storage and processing fees. I don't understand why Youtube (and other tech platforms) sets the barriers to entry so low, then inundate themselves with work. Simply raise the barriers until your human-approval processes can handle the volume.
- djsumdog 8y agoand really if you don't intent to have ads run on your content, you shouldn't use Youtube. Setup a Peertube instance. YouTube is just too big and content creators that are up and coming should see if they can take control over their content instead of depending on Google, which is just a new version of NBC/CBS/ABC at this point.
- hackinthebochs 8y agoWhat does monetization have to do with any of this, except as a hook to attack youtube and bait advertisers to respond? Monetization is entirely irrelevant to the problematic issues at play.
- beerlord 8y agoAll of the means to attack Youtube have been centred on questionable video content being supported with ads from mainstream companies. Youtube should have wisened up and become a lot more selective of which videos were supplied with ads. And if running slightly fewer ads is too commecially difficult, then save costs by limiting new uploads to 720p.
- djsumdog 8y agoA lot of the videos he shows seem like they're mostly Ukrainian, some Eastern European or Russian. Are there different social standards where parents there just don't care as much if their kids post this stuff?
- raldi 8y agoThe recommendation algorithm should distinguish between viewers who happen upon a video like this once in a while and viewers who binge-watch them, and disregard the latter when putting together input for the algorithm that determines what shows up in people's "Watch Next" sidebars. They could also detect links to compromising timestamps in the comments, take them down, and shut down the accounts that post them. It's not particularly challenging. (I used to work as an engineer on YouTube's abuse team many years ago.)
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y agoWhat do you do know? Just curious [= That's a really cool idea.
- johnisgood 8y agoIt is funny though, because it is them who make the association... I would have never looked at it that way if they wouldn't have told me to.
- Guest192392 8y agoI think the discussion is important, because something needs to be done. It's a scary situation going on. Yes, the videos are kids being themselves, and typically uploaded by the children. However, then these predators show up pretending to be other children, and they talk these kids into doing more explicit and inappropriate things. They ask children to film a video sucking on a lollipop, they ask them to make a video showing how to do the splits, or they ask them to make a video playing twister with their sister. I even saw them asking children to do the "toothpaste challenge", where they try to get them to fill their mouth with toothpaste so it looks like cum. If I start typing "toothpaste challenge" YouTube autocompletes "toothpaste challenge drool", "toothpaste challenge tongue", "toothpaste challenge little girl", "toothpaste challenge girls". These kids don't know any better. They make 50 videos that all have 50 views, then they make a yoga video and it gets recommended over and over again to predators, and they end up with one million views. Then the above situation unfolds where they're requested to make more inappropriate content, or the children realize their gymnastics videos are by far the most popular, so they make more, and more. They think they're making tutorials for other children, but the other side of the camera is just thousands of predators watching and pushing them to go further. Then they start trying to trade contact information with the children to get them off the site. I don't know how you fix the problem, but it is a problem. We're talking about videos with millions of views here. It's not one or two people trying to exploit these children, it's literally hundreds of thousands, and I think the kids need some help protecting themselves.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> However, then these predators show up pretending to be other children, and they talk these kids into doing more explicit and inappropriate things. So instead of trying to ban the videos and restricting user freedom to prevent the videos and deploying automation to recognize them, why don't we ban the predatory behavior and set system rules to prevent and/or direct AI at identifying that.
- Guest192392 8y agoBlocking comments only solves the direct contact between predators and children. As I said, some of these children will make 50 videos with no viewers, but then they create a gymnastics or yoga video that goes viral with predators. Even if the comments are disabled, these children realize what subject matter grows their subscribers and view count the fastest, so they keep producing more of those videos. Then another kid sees their channel, and notices their yoga video got one million views, so now they try making yoga videos to replicate it. To their surprise, they also gain traction, and the cycle continues. So, even without a single comment, you still end up with thousands of children making tutorials on how to do the splits, while they cannot begin to comprehend what is taking place and how they're being exploited.
- post_break 8y agoYouTube only seems to do something when it's a controversy and Ad dollars are on the line. Putting out fire after fire I don't know how the CEO keeps her job. Daddyofive, weird children ASMR, elsa-gate, algorithm being 2 clicks away from weird obscure kid videos.
- minimaxir 8y agoThat is why tech journalism is very important!
- umeshunni 8y agoToo bad it doesn't exist.
- xxpor 8y ago>YouTube only seems to do something when it's a controversy and Ad dollars are on the line "Humans respond to incentives" isn't really surprising IMO.
- CyberDildonics 8y agoYou can hire firefighters, I would rather hire people who know how to build a house that doesn't burn down.
- pedrocx486 8y ago
- 14 8y agoYoutube wants to cater to everyone but to me it is clear Youtube is a risky place for a child. I let my kids use the site but I have no expectations of anything less then we are seeing here and try to keep an eye from behind. But I myself have found these types of wormholes he talked about in the video. Searching for massage techniques and saw a pretty girl so clicked it then next thing I know I am down a worm hole of naked women being massaged on Youtube. Another worm hole is the one pointed out by another youtuber about breastfeeding videos. You search for breastfeeding and you will see these creepy videos pretending to be educational but clearly are just a video of a woman showing her breasts and a child feeding. Then came across videos that seem to be educational but really it was just a large breasted woman standing naked and the video described all her lady parts with close up shots. So to me clearly youtube has all sorts of crazy things from how to have sex to how to build weapons. I am not kidding myself that it is a kid hostile environment. I do find that they have do many good videos for kids so allow my kids on the platform. I just do my best to keep an eye what is going on.
- komali2 8y agoWhat I don't get is why the fringe community even exists - is there that large of a market of people with porn websites blocked, but youtube not blocked?
- Loughla 8y agoPeople at work? Other than that, honestly, the only population I can come up with who would be watching these on youtube instead of an actual porn site would be kids.
- Mirioron 8y agoWhat would stop kids from going to a porn site anyway? The question whether you're 18+?
- jshevek 8y agoConsider that "softcore" porn doesn't exist just because of restrictions, it also serves a market for a certain set of tastes. I can see someone preferring to watch two attractive women massage each other on YouTube over the content found on porn sites.
- protomyth 8y agoDo big advertisers have a way to pick what creators / channels they advertise with? It seems like they don't give the number of times they've completed pulled out.
- toss1 8y agoYouTube is an amazing library, but you must absolutely know what you're looking for. The search algorithms have been cleaned up a bit in the last year, e.g., a search of "is the earth round" now pulls up a majority of actual astronomy vids debunking flat earth, but still serious junk in the top 10. But a year or two ago, it was 80%+ junk. Similar for Chemtrails. So they're making progress on the fake news. But the autoplay and recommendations just run off the rails in a hurry. These should just be shut down until they can put enough intelligence behind them to actually keep making sense (i.e., a very long time). But unlikely to happen, since autoplay generates more eyeball-seconds, and the costs of bad wormholes are external to Alphabet . . .
- cronix 8y agoJust get rid of comments, which are mostly useless crap anyway. Or force the content uploader to manually approve individual comments on their videos before they can be made public and hold the uploader responsible for everything shown. The content is innocent (from what I've seen). Might as well ban catalogs and all underwear/swimsuit ads. They show young girls (and boys) in underwear, swimsuits, leotards, etc. Some deviant somewhere will use that for purposes other than it was intended. Might as well get rid of it all, everywhere, because someone, somewhere will misuse it.
- rixrax 8y ago>> Just get rid of comments, which are mostly useless crap anyway. Exactly this. And same for FB. Forced moderation. I had a video in Youtube that somehow managed to get >100k views. The comments were absolutely worthless junk. I cant even understand why would someone go write most of that stuff. Probably the only close to grammatically correct comments were the ones that asked if they could use video somewhere in some form or the other.
- djsumdog 8y agoThey'd probably have to get rid of playlists too. Like the other comment said, a lot of these are just innocent videos, many of which kids make themselves. Either that or they're videos from sports games or dance competitions. The videos themselves are pretty normal. It's the context that the playlists place them in that's at issue.
- robbrown451 8y agoThis just seems ridiculous. I post a lot of videos of my daughter to share with my family and friends, and generally don't care who looks at them any more than I care who looks at her (or what they are thinking) when we are in public. I've gotten a couple creepy comments here and there from random people who found them. (the comments weren't overtly sexual though, but I deleted them anyway) Here's an example of a harmless one that got such comments (note that my daughter is the one in the jeans, I tried to be careful when shooting it regarding the girl in the skirt): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p21NMw54Y0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p21NMw54Y0 I also notice that video has 10 times the number of views as the rest of the videos of her, presumably because of the title. I had a couple videos from when she was younger and wearing diapers and a shirt when she was wading in the bay, and got a comment from someone who wanted to know what brand of diapers she was wearing. (wtf?) I deleted the comment of course, but a while later I see that YouTube has deleted the video for "inappropriate content" (double wtf). I mean, she was more covered up than if she was wearing a two piece bathing suit. The thing is, even if someone is a perv and gets off on this sort of thing, it isn't endangering her. I'm not going to lose sleep over it. If I am really that worried about protecting her from pedophiles, I probably shouldn't take her anywhere in public, where someone could follow us home or otherwise directly cause her harm. I'm not going to live my life in that kind of fear.
- malvosenior 8y agoCan I ask why you would make those videos public, instead of private and sharing them with just people you know?
- robbrown451 8y agoBecause a few people subscribe (family and friends), and I put them in a playlist, and so on. I mean, I don't care. She's just playing at the playground. I didn't think about it at the time, I guess I could, but I don't see why it matters. If I was concerned about anything, it would be about creepy people seeing her in the real world.
- deleted 8y ago
- sigmaris 8y agoInstead of hiring enough humans to review the content they make money from, Google's approach to catching this stuff seems to be doing a global search for videos with "CP" in related text and auto-banning the channels: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47278362 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47278362 and then claiming that they're making use of "artificial intelligence" to moderate the platform.
- freeflight 8y agoI'd be really interested in how many humans you'd consider "enough humans" to actually be able to make an impact? Because it's quite easy to underestimate just how much content is constantly uploaded to YouTube, how much of it is watched and reported, on a per second basis [0]. With numbers like that, you could probably fully employ a small nation of people and still wouldn't be able to review and catch everything. That is the main reason why they try to automate all their solutions, they need to work at a massive scale, manual reviews simply can't do that. [0] http://www.everysecond.io/youtube http://www.everysecond.io/youtube
- brandonjm 8y agoAlso they will not involve humans because it removes their ability to blame the system. If a human employee fails to correctly flag something (which is likely given the sheer volume of incoming content to review) and it slips through, YouTube could potentially be held liable for its effects (whatever they may be). Whereas if the system misses something it's easier to pass it off as just a bug that needs fixing or an obscure edge case that wasn't handled.
- freeflight 8y agoI doubt that plays any actual role because as long as it's properly outsourced nobody can claim it was one of their employees who censored something. Which is exactly what happens in the Philippines [0]: > There are two ways the content is forwarded to the Philippines. The first is a pre-filter, an algorithm, a machine that can analyze the shape of, say, a sexual organ, or the color of blood or certain skin color. So whenever the pre-filter is analyzing and it picks up on something that is inappropriate, the machine will send that content to the Philippines and the content moderators will double check if the machine was right. The second route is when the user flags the content as being inappropriate. Afaik Facebook, Twitter, and Google all participate in this kind of "moderation outsourcing" but the only way this is even possible is if they have AI/ML pre-select content for moderation. [0] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywe7gb/the-companies-cleaning-the-deepest-darkest-parts-of-social-media https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywe7gb/the-companies-clea...
- jtolds 8y agoI'm surprised that the comments here focus on any specific video and don't focus on the fact that YouTube starts recommending the next similar video. YouTube has convinced me that recommendation systems are garbage in general. Try seeing what YouTube recommends to play after a few plays of searching for something historic like the moon landing. We can't crowd source finding related videos and then shrug like this. This would not be nearly as big of a deal if YouTube's recommendation system was dropped entirely.
- AJ007 8y agoI strongly agree that the serious issue here is Youtube's recommendation system. There is nothing inherently wrong with recommendation systems. There is a problem when they are optimized for maximum view time with a disregard to content. Youtube's flaws are magnified further because users are being paid by Google for the content they create, rewarding them to make even more videos the recommendation engine likes. Here is another timely example brought to you by Youtube also published today: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/youtube-anti-vaccination-video-recommendations https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/youtub...
- porpoisely 8y agoIf you don't like the recommends, then don't use it. Youtube's recommend can be great. If you search for C# or any programming video, it provides a great way to find other interesting videos. Why is that the busybodies always want to ruin something for everyone else because they themselves don't like it? Also, if you don't like the videos, then don't watch it. What's so difficult about that?
- dredmorbius 8y agoYouTube recommendations are the best posible advertisement for mps-youtube. (I'm presently listening to a specifically curated queue of 8+ hours of lectures of an author of recent interest, via Termux on Android, which I can background, unlike YouTube Web or App clients.)
- int_19h 8y agoI mostly use YouTube for music, and I find that their recommendation system is pretty good at giving me new and interesting releases and bands to watch.
- vibrato 8y agoAt some point, social media companies need to realize that they ARE utilities. They should not attempt to control their content, rather, law enforcement should prosecute illegal usage.
- brandonjm 8y agoIt's more difficult for law enforcement to prosecute illegal usage of social media than other 'utilities'. Given the international nature of most social media, illegal usage could happen anywhere on Earth and no one but local law enforcement would have no power to do anything. If someone started stealing electricity without paying or using it for some illegal purpose it would be much easier to prosecute them as they would likely be within the same jurisdiction as the utility operates.
- amanaplanacanal 8y agoThey think that if they don't control their content, their customers and advertisers will leave. They are probably right.
- movedx 8y agoAn eleven year old shouldn't be uploading content to YouTube. An eleven year old doesn't understand the second or third order consequences of their actions when they upload a video of themselves, along with their friends, trying on bikinis in their bedrooms. If you're under 16, your content, and the uploading of it, should be supervised. Why are we letting our children run free on the Internet? You wouldn't let them run free on a highway and the Internet is just as dangerous but in different ways. I believe YouTube need to implement a system of age verification for content creators. 16+ minimum if you ask me. If the parents do the uploading, whelp, you found your issue (if any arise)
- brianpgordon 8y agoMy 10-15 year old self would hate you. Most of what I even remember about being that age from my involvement in various online communities. I didn't have many friends at school so I talked to people in games and chat instead. To suggest that my parents should have to be there to "supervise" me is absurd. To some extent they tried to do this, and I resented it and I'm certain that it did no good at all. Not least because sanitizing access to the internet is impossible and if I wanted to get past a restriction of any kind I found a way. Your kids talk to each other at school without parents going over their conversations to make sure everything is kosher. Interacting online isn't any different, as long as they know not to give out their physical location publicly or to strangers. Even more so these days, kids are digital natives. Cutting them off from the network is like giving them a lobotomy. They'll be well behaved, obedient, sessile outcasts. Anyway, interacting online is so little like running free on the highway that it's difficult to even find a foothold to frame a counter-argument. It's a non sequitur.
- movedx 8y ago> Interacting online isn't any different Except a school is a (mostly) sealed environment. The Internet is not. Anyone can join the conversation online. Not just anyone can walk into a school classroom and pretend to be a teenager to social engineer a young girl. > Cutting them off from the network is like giving them a lobotomy. I didn't say cut them off.
- hnuser123457 8y agoAmazing. Nestle, who kills babies, and Disney, which is itself in the "softcore child porn" market, acting as though their corporate morals have been compromised by advertising on YouTube because of creepy/criminal commenters.
- skybrian 8y agoIt's not the same, but I'm reminded of the Habitat Chronicles [1]: "I found myself unable to reconcile the idea of a virtual world, where kids would run around, play with objects, and chat with each other without someone saying or doing something that might upset another. Even in 1996, we knew that text-filters are no good at solving this kind of problem, so I asked for a clarification: 'I’m confused. What standard should we use to decide if a message would be a problem for Disney?' "The response was one I will never forget: 'Disney’s standard is quite clear: No kid will be harassed, even if they don’t know they are being harassed.'" So now it's 2019, and here we are. I guess the filters have gotten better. We certainly expect a lot more from them. [1] http://habitatchronicles.com/2007/03/the-untold-history-of-toontowns-speedchat-or-blockchattm-from-disney-finally-arrives/ http://habitatchronicles.com/2007/03/the-untold-history-of-t...
- make3 8y agoReally seems ridiculous.....
- khazhou 8y agoHow effective is YT Kids mobile app at filtering out this junk?
- jumelles 8y agoThought this would be able Elsagate videos. That's another problem that needs fixing - badly.
- srkmno 8y agoIf I understand this correctly the videos in question are family videos uploaded and monetized by parents, and the issue is that perverts are commenting on them, right? Invariably a small percentage of people are going to suck, it's the way of the world, what is YouTube or anyone to do about it? Are they now responsible for everyone who watches a publicly available video? This brand of hysteria is the product of alarmism, and sensationalism regarding everything social media, it's gotten ridiculous when we blame theses platforms for all of humanity's failings and newspapers are advocating for censorship.
- dcplogic 8y agoSo.. does this mean Disney will cancel the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Channel too? Plenty of live action tv there involving teens/pre-teens.
- skissane 8y agoMy wife and I have lots of photos and videos of our kids on the Internet. Not on YouTube, but on Facebook and Instagram yes. I think most of them, only our "friends" can see them. But social media friends includes some random person I sat with once on a plane 5+ years ago and have never spoken to since, and people my wife used to play Farmville with, and someone one of us went to high school with and haven't spoken to in twenty years, and so on. Is it possible that some of these people who see photos/videos of our kids are getting some sort of creepy pleasure out of it? Probably not, but you never know. But, if they are, should I care? I mean, if one of our kids walks down the street, and some creep glances at them briefly and gets some sick pleasure out of it, but leaves it all in their head – there is no way we could ever know, and as disturbing as it is to think about, it isn't harming anyone anyway. Now, if they take it out of their heads, and start acting on it – harassment, stalking, grooming, abduction, etc. – very different story. But, that's pretty unlikely to actually happen. And most random people on the Internet are far away physically, and so little risk of being able to do anything like that, at least in non-virtual forms. The main protection against the virtual forms of those things, is really monitoring of children's Internet usage, and educating them–I doubt the availability of photos/videos makes much difference.
- alanlamm 8y agoI am surprised at how few of the comments here say - if parents and/or kids want to make non-sexual videos public, fine. If paedophiles are aroused by them nometheless, fine too (as long as they do so privately and don't harrass the kids). I don't know why one would presume to have a 'right not to incite arousal' in another. Personally, I'd choose paedophiles enjoying videos of my children over censorship by large american corporations any day.
- jaimex2 8y agoYay. Apocalypse 2.0 on its way. Looking forward to: 1. Any videos with footage of kids in them de-monetised. 2. Comments disabled by default on any sub 100k subscriber channels 3. Mandatory ID verification to be allowed to comment.
- dawnerd 8y agoI think that'd be a good thing, honestly. Predatory would be scared away if they have to attach some form of id to their digital identity. I mentioned before, it could be as simple as validating a credit card.
- porpoisely 8y agoAre they going to pull ads from the Oscars which celebrate an actual child rapist like Roman Polanski? Also, Nestle peddles sugary drinks to children and Disney peddles toxic movies to children. Since when does either company care about children? I guess this is a win-win for children. Youtube cracks down on pedophiles and Nestle/Disney stops peddling their toxic product to children. Edit: Also, Nestle and Disney have children in their ads. Are they going to stop exploiting children and using their ads to lure pedophiles?