YouTube to crack down on inappropriate content masked as kids' cartoons
Recent news stories and blog posts highlighted the underbelly of YouTube Kids, Google's children-friendly version of the wide world of YouTube. While all content on YouTube Kids is meant to be suitable for children under the age of 13, some inappropriate videos using animations, cartoons, and child-focused keywords manage to get past YouTube's algorithms and in front of kids' eyes. Now, YouTube will implement a new policy in an attempt to make the whole of YouTube safer: it will age-restrict inappropriate videos masquerading as children's content in the main YouTube app.
[...] Also, all age-restricted content is not eligible for advertising, which will undoubtedly hit the wallets of the creators making these videos. While it's hard to understand why anyone would make a video about Peppa Pig drinking bleach or a bunch of superheroes and villains participating in a cartoonish yet violent "nursery rhyme," it's been a decent way to make money on YouTube. Some of these videos have amassed hundreds of thousands (and sometimes millions) of views, gleaning ad dollars and channel popularity.
Check the related videos to see some bizarre clickbait. Some are even live action skits performed by adults.
Are we doing enough to traumatize our kids?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @03:15PM
That's my point it's a "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!" move, the policy and the automation will be broadly applied and soon enough when you want to watch things that are debatabley not child friendly like last week tonight, suddenly they are collecting and linking your viewing your, childrens viewing your friends, etc, etc, it sounds like a lot of this stuff would fall under there IP and other content restrictions so take it down. classifying it "adult" is just a way to monitor people more