YouTube Backlash

YouTube is facing an avalanche of criticism over an alarming number of predatory comments and videos targeting young children.  This has been a problem for years, and yet, YouTube still has not found an effective way to deal with these predators on their platform.  This is egregious for a multi-million dollar company who is advancing into live stream TV, yet, they cannot even protect their young users on its platform.  In a world today where people live on the internet, it is important to monitor what young children are doing on the internet.  Even though it is a great place for valuable information and communicating, it can be harmful to innocent children who do not know how dangerous the internet can be. Below is an article from AllTop:

"The latest concerns started with a Reddit post, submitted to r/Drama, and a YouTube video, exposing a “wormhole into a soft-core pedophilia ring on YouTube,” according to Matt Watson. Watson, a former YouTube creator who returned with a single video and live stream about the topic, demonstrated how a search for something like “bikini haul,” a subgenre of video where women show various bikinis they’ve purchased, can lead to disturbing and exploitative videos of children. The videos aren’t pornographic in nature, but the comment sections are full of people time stamping specific scenes that sexualize the child or children in the video. Comments about how beautiful young girls are also litter the comment section.

Although Watson’s video is gaining mainstream attention, this isn’t the first time that YouTube has dealt with this issue. In 2017, YouTube updated its policies to address an event known as “ElsaGate,” in which disturbing, sexualized kids’ content was being recommended to children. That same year, YouTube decided to close some comment sections on videos with children in an attempt to block predatory behavior from pedophiles. As early as 2013, Google changed its search algorithm to prevent exploitative content from appearing in searches on both Google and YouTube. But despite years of public outcry, YouTube still hasn’t found a way to effectively deal with apparent predators on its platform"

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/19/18229938/youtube-child-exploitation-recommendation-algorithm-predators