Thursday, February 14, 2019

deleted or demonetized

YOUTUBE AND CHILDREN'S CHANNELS WITH DISTURBING VIDEOS


Earlier this week, The Verge report and a post on TechCrunch blog  attracted a lot of weird and sometimes disturbing YouTube videos about young children. In the genre, which was previously discussed in February of this year, popular characters from family brands are used , but this kind of content is often created without great care and can quickly deviate from innocent themes.

In August of this year, YouTube announced that it would no longer allow authors to monetize videos that "misused family heroes." Today, the platform takes another step forward to try to protect children's content.

“We are introducing a new policy in which, age limits will be set for this kind of content in the main YouTube app with a mark,” said Juniper Downs, director of policy for YouTube. "Age-limited YouTube content is automatically banned in YouTube Kids." YouTube says the new policy has been under development for some time and is not a direct response to recent discoveries.


The first line of defense for YouTube Kids is algorithmic filters. After automatic content filtering, it is the turn of a team of people who are watching videos marked with an algorithm. If a video with recognizable childish characters is marked in the main YouTube app, it will be sent to the content review team.

The type of content that has been deleted or demonetized (i.e. on which advertising has been banned):

- Incorrect or improper use of superheroes (a number of examples can be seen here );
- Videos of adults participating in infantile infamy (example: Toy Freaks Family channel );
- Dangerous actions : games with needles / syringes, aggression (even comic), the danger of strangulation;

It is encouraging that, according to YouTube, thousands of people work around the clock in different time zones to view the marked content. If the review reveals that the video violates the new policy, an age limit will be imposed on it, automatically blocking its display in the YouTube Kids app.

YouTube says that, as a rule, it takes at least several days for content to be allowed from YouTube’s main platform to YouTube Kids, and our hope is that users can check everything in this window that could potentially be dangerous children.

YouTube also has a team of volunteer moderators who help with searching for inappropriate content. YouTube says it will begin preparing its content review team for a new policy that should be ready to go within a few weeks.

Along with filtering content from the YouTube Kids app, the new policy also provides for a sample of viewers who can see these videos on the main YouTube page. Tagged content will be limited by age, and users will not be able to view these videos if they are not logged into accounts registered by a user 18 years or older. All age materials are also automatically exempt from advertising. This means that this new policy may put pressure on the rapidly growing business of creating children's content.

YouTube is trying to draw a thin line between the perception of this situation and the problem that the problem is relatively small. The share of videos on YouTube Kids, which were missed by its algorithmic filters, and then tagged by users in the last 30 days, amounted to only 0.005% of the platform’s videos. The company also claims that reports that unacceptable videos have attracted millions of views on YouTube Kids without verification are false, because these views come from activities on YouTube itself, where it is clearly stated in terms of service that the content of the service is aimed at users from 13 years and older.

In a recent policy statement, YouTube recognizes this problem and promises to better monitor content verification. He does not want to directly prohibit the use of family characters by authors who are not original YouTube copyright holders, but acknowledges that YouTube Kids requires even more moderation.

The company is ready to abandon the additional income from advertising - and in this segment a large amount of money is promoted - if it is necessary for YouTube Kids to become a safe application for families and their children.

#bbtv

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