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YouTube to disable comments on videos featuring minors after child safety fears
YouTube on Thursday said it won't allow people to leave comments on some videos that feature minors, as the Google-owned video site deals with a scandal involving what one blogger called a "softcore pedophilia ring."
The company will disable comments on all videos that star "young minors" and "older minors that could be at risk of attracting predatory behavior," YouTube said.
However, the company said it'll keep comments enabled for a small number of creators who are minors. In those cases, the videos will be actively moderated and YouTube will work with the creators directly. Though the company said it's starting with a small group, it eventually wants to open up comments again to more creators.
YouTube said it's also launching software that could automatically detect and remove predatory comments.
YouTube bans comments on all videos of children
Videos of older children and teenagers will typically not have the comments disabled, unless a specific video is likely to attract predatory attention. That could include, for example, a video of a teenager doing gymnastics.
YouTube told the BBC it would use algorithms to detect which videos contained children.
Blog post. Also at TechCrunch and LA Times.
Previously: Inappropriate Comments Could Lead to Video Demonetization on YouTube
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 01 2019, @03:29PM (4 children)
That would be a significant detriment to content creators that use the comments to interact with fans or gauge reactions. Believe it or not, but YouTube still cares about its users. Users just take a backseat to advertisers. But if things on YouTube get too fucked, there are platforms waiting to take refugees. Fecesbook/Instagram [soylentnews.org] might be the most viable one.
All signs point instead to GooTube using machine learning or AI to handle all tasks on the site, particularly censorship. The problems involved with this approach are nearly herculean, but the payoff is great (handle billions of videos automatically, no more paying mechanical turks). It's AI all day long for Google.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 01 2019, @03:38PM
Hey! Thasss RACISSS!!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday March 01 2019, @03:59PM
I don't believe it. They only care enough to not actively cause mass rebellions. After all, they are monetizing the content of others, so they need those "others" to keep posting, in order to attract advertisers, etc.. But that's as far as their "care" goes.
Yeah, yeah. I'll believe it when I see it. People have been predicting a mass exodus from Facebook for years too as more and more (and MORE) privacy issues, issues with censorship, issues with feed algorithms, etc., etc. have come up. I have little doubt Facebook will eventually die off, but it's clear that the vast majority of consumers don't care... they keep posting their crap on Facebook to get their little endorphin awards when someone "likes" their post of some random life moment.
Similarly with Youtube: it would take a LOT of high-profile Youtube creators staging a boycott along with massive unrest about the platform in general to trigger a mass exodus from Youtube. I just don't see that happening. And thus Youtube/Google doesn't need to really care about its users, anymore than Microsoft cares about its users when it releases a new version of Windows every couple years that pisses most people off. Or Gmail progressively making the interface worse and more slow every few years seemingly just to piss everyone off. "You don't like it? We don't care."
Users don't matter if you're a dominant platform. And users matter even less if there are ads to be sold.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by urza9814 on Friday March 01 2019, @04:05PM (1 child)
The problem is when you get people like a friend I had in college...she was in her late 20s, but most people would guess she was around 12. She was often hassled at airports because security thought she was an unaccompanied minor. She'd attend student group events and you'd get people whispering to the organizers "Wait, are CHILDREN allowed here??" (she was pretty active in the LGBT groups, and not everyone thought the content of some of those events would be appropriate). So, how can an AI algorithm actually guess someone's age when human beings can't even do that task? The only option I can think of is if it can identify the individual person. Facial recognition on the video linked to a Google or Facebook profile photo. Automated identity tracking of every single person visible in every single video on the site. Seriously creepy and invasive shit....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 01 2019, @07:08PM
And then there are people with Progeria
http://petoftheday.com/talk/showthread.php?t=152364 [petoftheday.com]
And then there are kids now, like 12 years old, that look like they are 20. And like in your friend's case, the other way around. Like my wife, she looks like she's in high school but she's 30.
So what's the point? AI is good for general case, but it will fuck up with the outliers. The same is true about real humans. As for the pedos (which supposedly is the problem here), they will exist as long as perverts and psychopaths exist. Only way to keep our kids safe from them is a progressive agenda w.r.t. treatment their problem not just a reactive policy we seem to have today. There should be programs where pedos can come out of their pedo closets and get proper treatment without getting fucked over by society *IFF* they have not hurt a child.
And then, of course, we have the trolls. I wonder how much of the problems are actually trolls and not the pedos.