YouTube Making Big Changes to Protect Kids
Parents with children who love to watch videos on YouTube or the YouTube Kids app have been freaking out about their kids being subjected to violent and disturbing messages, but it turns out the problem could be much worse than we thought.
Experts are now saying the "Momo Challenge" is a hoax, but it is an absolute truth that disturbing and violent videos exist on YouTube, and the likelihood that our kids could be subjected to them is way too high.
According to The Guardian, last week the maker of Fortnite, Epic Games, pulled their advertising on YouTube after an alleged "“wormhole into a softcore paedophile ring” was discovered on the site.
Epic Games isn't the only company to pull their advertising dollars, Nestle has too, and YouTube is not going to let the bleeding continue.
The Guardian reports;
YouTube will turn off comments on all videos that contain young children, the company says, as well as a number of other enforcement actions designed to stave off an advertiser boycott sparked by the discovery of an organised paedophile ring operating in plain sight on the video-sharing platform.
The company will disable all comments on videos featuring younger children, and will also disable comments on those videos of older children that have some risk of attracting predatory behaviour, YouTube says.
Sounds like a positive step, right? The revamping of YouTube security won't stop there though. The Guardian says YouTube has also;
prioritized the launch of an AI moderator that is “more sweeping in scope, and will detect and remove two times more individual comments” than its predecessor, in an attempt to identify and remove predatory comments before they can cause harm.
Sadly, no matter how proactive YouTube is about security on their site, bad people will still find a way to do bad things. As parents we need to talk to kids about what they watch on YouTube or the YouTube Kids app, and we need to regulate it. Spend some time in the parental controls. Set some permissions for what channels your kids are able to watch, and turn off the recommended videos option. Staying aware is the number thing we can do to protect our children from social media predators. Be present...keep them safe.
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