YouTube Bans Comments on Videos of Young Children in Bid to Block Predators
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YouTube said last week that it had disabled comments on tens of millions of videos featuring children under 13. The company said it planned to alter its algorithm over the next several months to create a blanket policy.
“Recently, there have been some deeply concerning incidents regarding child safety on YouTube,” Susan Wojcicki, company’s chief executive, wrote in a post on Twitter announcing the move. “Nothing is more important to us than ensuring the safety of young people on the platform.”
The company said it would make an exception for a small number of channels on the site that feature content considered to be at less risk for attracting pedophiles, such as toy-review videos; the channels will be required to actively moderate comments.
YouTube said it would use a new machine-learning system to identify and remove predators’ comments. The company, which has said it removes hundreds of millions of comments from videos every quarter for violating its rules, estimated that the new approach would double the number of comments flagged for removal.
YouTube has struggled to keep up with pedophiles’ sometimes subtle methods for leaving suggestive remarks on videos of children.
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