In the last year, YouTube has faced many complaints from users, especially those of us who have children, for having millions of videos with deceptive or disturbing content on its platform. Some channels have been eliminated entirely, because they showed situations not suitable for children, such as videos of a father who made videos where he humiliated his daughters.
A few weeks ago, the company announced the creation of a new policy in order to prevent children from watching deceptive videos, and now they go one step further: They recently announced that by 2018 they will hire more than 10,000 people to help eliminate all that inappropriate content.
Security measures have not proven sufficient
Some months ago, I shared information about those deceptive videos of children's cartoons that children could find on YouTube, and gave you some tips to avoid them. The main problem with this type of content is that It seems to be normal, like any chapter of your children's favorite cartoon, but that was transformed into something really disturbing.
Derived from this, at first YouTube had created a special version for children, YouTube Kids, but some parents found that even within this seemingly secure platform, it was possible to find content not suitable for children.
Then YouTube decided to ask for user support, telling them that when they found this type of content they would report them, so that they could be removed from the site. Although this may be a way to do it, the reality is that videos of violent or disturbing content are published daily among the thousands of new videos that are available every day., making reporting and eliminating them is not a very fast process.
A few months ago, YouTube then announced a new security measure: those videos that show children characters in inappropriate behaviors, would not be suitable for advertising on the platform. The idea of this was to discourage those who made these videos, because they would not get anything from them. However, this measure was not enough either.
In November of this year, they announced a new policy of age restrictions, whose purpose remained the same as the previous ones: to prevent inappropriate content from being seen by children.
What this new policy would do is prevent users who are not logged in or who are registered as under 18, can watch videos that include vulgar language, violence or disturbing, naked images and sexually suggestive content or that represent dangerous or harmful activities.
A new plan: hire more staff
Although they have taken action and implemented measures to prevent such content reported by parents from reaching children, the truth is that they have been small steps. Fortunately, it seems that they have already realized that this requires more action and recently announced a new plan: to hire more staff.
According to YouTube, from 2018 they will hire more than 10,000 people whose only function is to review and analyze the videos that are within the platform, in order to help these contents be removed more quickly and efficiently. Similarly, its policies regarding the publication and approval of comments will have changes to eliminate and prohibit those that are necessary.
Through a statement on the YouTube blog, its CEO Susan Wojcicki mentioned that since June to date, more than 2 million videos with inappropriate content have been removed, thanks to the team dedicated to doing so and that will increase in the next year.
Hopefully YouTube will continue to take and apply measures to eliminate such content, but remember also that we as parents are responsible for watching the videos and programs that our children watch, making sure that the content to which they have access is appropriate for their age, and this will be achieved by being aware of and close to them.
Photos | iStock
Via | Fatherly
In Babies and more | Keep an eye on what your children see on YouTube: there are very violent videos of children's drawings, YouTube creates a new policy to prevent your children from watching deceptive videos, but is it enough ?, Youtube eliminates the videos of a father who showed his daughters in humiliating situations or being protagonists of heavy jokes
