{"id":372436,"date":"2017-11-11T09:10:02","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T09:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=372436"},"modified":"2017-11-11T09:10:02","modified_gmt":"2017-11-11T09:10:02","slug":"youtube-to-restrict-disturbing-childrens-videos-if-flagged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=372436","title":{"rendered":"YouTube to restrict ‘disturbing’ children’s videos, if flagged"},"content":{"rendered":"

YouTube is to restrict the availability of videos showing children’s characters in violent or sexual scenes if they are reported by viewers.<\/p>\n

Last week, a blog post by writer James Bridle highlighted how YouTube was still being swamped by bizarre and indecent videos aimed at children.<\/p>\n

The site says it already stops such videos earning advertising revenue.<\/p>\n

YouTube said its team was “made up of parents who are committed to improving our apps and getting this right”.<\/p>\n

But critics say YouTube is not taking enough action by waiting for viewers to report inappropriate videos.<\/p>\n

‘Something’s wrong’<\/strong><\/p>\n

The problem of video-makers using popular characters such as Peppa Pig in violent or sexual videos, to frighten children, has been\u00a0widely reported.<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0Mr Bridle’s blog post\u00a0went deeper into what he called the rabbit hole of children’s content on YouTube.<\/p>\n

He gave examples of videos aimed at children that were not necessarily violent or sexual but were sinister, “disturbing” or otherwise inappropriate.<\/p>\n

Often it appeared that the videos had been algorithmically generated to capitalise on popular trends.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Cartoon
In one clip, Spiderman and Elsa, from Frozen, fire machine guns<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figure>\n

“Stock animations, audio tracks, and lists of keywords being assembled in their thousands to produce an endless stream of videos,” he said.<\/p>\n

Many used popular family entertainment characters such as Spiderman, and Elsa from Frozen, and had been viewed millions of times.<\/p>\n

“Someone or something or some combination of people and things is using YouTube to systematically frighten, traumatise, and abuse children, automatically and at scale,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

YouTube says it has already barred such videos from earning advertising money when they are reported by viewers, to try to remove the incentive to produce them.<\/p>\n

However, many of the videos do not get reported by viewers and continue to carry advertisements.<\/p>\n

YouTube has now said it will give such videos an age restriction if they are reported by viewers, so they cannot be viewed by people under 18.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Aladdin
Some of the videos are not rude or violent but use Disney characters in odd situations<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figure>\n

Age-restricted videos are blocked from appearing in the YouTube Kids app, which is primarily curated by algorithms.<\/p>\n

They also cannot be viewed on the YouTube website unless people are logged in with an adult’s account.<\/p>\n

However, a\u00a0report in the New York Times\u00a0found that inappropriate videos have previously slipped through the net.<\/p>\n

YouTube says it uses human reviewers to evaluate whether flagged videos are appropriate for a family audience.<\/p>\n

In his blog post, Mr Bridle said he did not know how YouTube could stamp out the problem.<\/p>\n

“We have built a world which operates at scale, where human oversight is simply impossible, and no manner of inhuman oversight will counter most of the examples I’ve used in this essay,” he said.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YouTube is to restrict the availability of videos showing children’s characters in violent or sexual scenes if they are reported by viewers. Last week, a blog post by writer James Bridle highlighted how YouTube was still being swamped by bizarre and indecent videos aimed at children. The site says it already stops such videos earning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=372436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=372436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=372436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=372436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}