Google-owned video website YouTube has disabled comments on millions of its videos that feature minors after a series of reports revealed such videos were receiving predatory comments.
On its blog, YouTube stated that in response to such reports, they had already suspended comments on “tens of millions” of videos featuring children, and that over the coming months this action will be widened to suspend comments on any video featuring young or older minors that could attract “predatory beahaviour”.
Earlier in the year, blogger Matt Watson revealed what he described as a “soft-core paedophilia ring” whereas a number of YouTube users were leaving inappropriate comments on videos featuring minors, and in some cases posting timestamps (comments that point to a specific part of a video) where the children in the video were deemed to be in fleetingly compromising positions.
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Watson pointed out that due to YouTube’s algorithms that try to point to relevant videos on the right hand side of their webpages, users could easily find other videos featuring children that were also subject to the same type of predatory behaviour. Something Watson had described as a “wormhole”.
Other comments led to external links leading to images of child abuse, while others shared contact information of users.
The discovery had left many companies who advertise on YouTube – including Disney – to announce they were pulling their adverts from the site.
This in turn infuriated content providers on YouTube who may see less revenue for their work if too many advertisers part ways.
YouTube however have said that the plan on working with a number of affected content creators and allow them to keep their comments enabled providing they actively moderate them; and they hope to grow that number as YouTube gets better at spotting offending comments.