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Submitted via IRC for chromas

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

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