Disney, Nestle, and Others Are Pulling YouTube Ads Following Child Exploitation Controversy (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Disney is said to have pulled its advertising spending from YouTube, joining other companies including Nestle, after a blogger detailed how comments on Google's video site were being used to facilitate a "soft-core pedophilia ring." Some of the videos involved ran next to ads placed by Disney and Nestle. All Nestle companies in the U.S. have paused advertising on YouTube, a spokeswoman for the company said Wednesday in an email. Video game maker Epic Games and German packaged food giant Dr. August Oetker KG also said they had postponed YouTube spending after their ads were shown to play before the videos. Disney has also withheld its spending.

On Sunday, Matt Watson, a video blogger, posted a 20-minute clip detailing how comments on YouTube were used to identify certain videos in which young girls were in activities that could be construed as sexually suggestive, such as posing in front of a mirror and doing gymnastics. Watson's video demonstrated how, if users clicked on one of the videos, YouTube's algorithms recommended similar ones. By Wednesday, Watson's video had been viewed more than 1.7 million times. Total ad spending on the videos mentioned was less than $8,000 within the last 60 days, and YouTube plans refunds, the spokeswoman said. Two years ago, Verizon, AT&T, Johnson & Johnson and other major companies pulled their ads from YouTube after learning that some of their ads surfaced next to extremist and violent content. Yesterday, YouTube released an updated policy about how it will handle content that "crosses the line" of appropriateness.

"Any content -- including comments -- that endangers minors is abhorrent and we have clear policies prohibiting this on YouTube. We took immediate action by deleting accounts and channels, reporting illegal activity to authorities and disabling violative comments," a spokeswoman for YouTube said in an email.

Comments

Good. Less ads to block

[WCMI92]

I hate ads on Youtube.

As sick as it is..

[scsirob]

.. There will always be sick people imagining things in pictures or videos that are not there. There will always be people that are offended by anything you do or say. When you put out stuff on the internet for the whole world to see, there's no way to *NOT* offend or trigger some idiot somewhere on the planet.

Please return to common sense. If a video shows a girl having fun, it's about the girl having fun. Not about to sicko three doors down who has sick fantasies. Turning to censorship will not change that.

Re:As sick as it is..

[zlives]

can we have a conversation about why people are uploading their kids on the internet in the first place?

Re:As sick as it is..

[TimMD909]

can we have a conversation about why people are uploading their kids on the internet in the first place?

Why? Narcissism.

Re:As sick as it is..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. There will always be sick people imagining things in pictures or videos that are not there. There will always be people that are offended by anything you do or say. When you put out stuff on the internet for the whole world to see, there's no way to *NOT* offend or trigger some idiot somewhere on the planet.

Please return to common sense. If a video shows a girl having fun, it's about the girl having fun. Not about to sicko three doors down who has sick fantasies. Turning to censorship will not change that.

Completely agree. This is just another internet do gooder on some fucking crusade. I've seen these videos and its just bunch of girls having fun. There are some slips but you can see that on TV and in Movies if you actually look for it. Until this idiot brought it up I've never have even noticed some of the shit he is bitching about.

Re:As sick as it is..

[Anonymous Coward]

A fully clothed girl doing gymnastics is not porn.

But, pedophiles will watch such a video and experience lust.

The fact that this will happen freaks people out, and a boring run-of-the-mill "look how adorable my kid is" video has suddenly become dirty.

This situation is fueled by emotion, so it is not logical. Emotion has tremendous motivating power, so you can't talk it down with logic.

People will suffer all kinds of injustice under the banner of protecting children. Its a strong instinct. That's why politicians like to play that card at every opportunity.

It is not fair. Too bad. That's the world we live in.

Re:As sick as it is..

[grep -v '.*' *]

why people are uploading their kids on the internet in the first place?

You wouldn't download a car, you wouldn't download a movie. But would you download a kid?

IMAGES. They're uploading IMAGES -- to share. They're also the parental guardians over them, so they have that right. (I think that's a right.) They're presumably doing it to show off to their friends or their kids friends, they don't realize (or don't care) that literally their entire world can watch them as well.

And what's wrong with that? Maybe another dance class instructor will learn a new move or have a new idea (OMG, CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!) Maybe another kid will watch these and decide "I can do that, too!"

Now let's be real -- SOME people are going to watch that and imagine sexual acts. Or bestiality. Or ritual sacrifice. Or beheadings. Or maybe new costume designs or even haircuts. That's true of ANYTHING. (Sheep jokes about NZ. Blond jokes. Rule 42. Someone took an actress's face and glued it on their sex doll.) If you're concerned someone might see something bad in a picture, you (a) shouldn't post it and (b) need to get your head out of the sand. (My mom used to say, "Get your head out of the gutter." Seemingly now-a-days, everyone's head IS the gutter. Not quite sure what happened -- "Sex Sells" or something.)

If we're leading up to talking about banning pictures because they might offend (or attract) someone, then notice that God, Allah, Re, Zeus, Odin, Thor, and FSM appear in EACH and EVERY picture on the internet. They're invisible, so you can't see them, but they're always there. So, let's start banning all pictures everywhere. (Here's a naughty one. But include Muhammad there and heads will literally roll.)

And BTW: if I start fantasizing about AOC, Nancy Pelosi, and Trump, can we ban every picture about ALL of them? I'd like for SOMEthing good to come out of this.

Re:As sick as it is..

[PhrostyMcByte]

Have you seen the video in question? This isn't an overreaction or censorship issue.

There are hundreds of comments on these videos of people calling the kids sexy and posting timestamps where the kids are in suggestive positions. often with some short exclamation or suggestive emojis attached, and some even linking to real child porn.

He started a brand new Youtube account, searched something slightly risque but completely safe and normal, and within two clicks found one of these videos along with countless additional suggestions that were all having the same issue.

Re:As sick as it is..

[MobyDisk]

Yes.

Growing up, a group of children in my neighborhood won an award for some civic duty. The newspaper printed a picture of the group and their first names, all except for one child. That child's parents were outraged that the newspaper wanted to publish that information. The believed that having people know their faces and names presented a danger to them. Or maybe it was a news broadcast now that I think of it. But over time, that kind of thinking mostly died out. That kind of information is so trivial to obtain just by walking around or driving around that protecting it is silly.

Are you suggesting that a video of a child on YouTube, with no last name and no location (which is less information than the newspaper offered) is a cause for concern?

Re:As sick as it is..

[The MAZZTer]

They are proud of their children and want to send videos to family and friends, but don't know how the privacy features of YouTube work (or that they even exist).

Re:As sick as it is..

[bobbied]

Are you suggesting that a video of a child on YouTube, with no last name and no location (which is less information than the newspaper offered) is a cause for concern?

Perhaps.. It depends on both the context and unknown future events. There is just no way to know for sure.

I think most folks vastly under estimate the amount of data they actually are giving up when they post stuff online. It's hard to understand just how the information will be stored, used and impact people in the future. It may be nothing, or, it may be a huge deal.

I think the young adults who grew up in a culture of oversharing everything, getting your 15 min of fame by going viral, it's tempting to just post stuff. Stuff that will be *really* embarrassing in about 10 years, when your kids find it or when some prospective employer want's you to explain why you posted the video in which you clearly are breaking the law in a big way... "I thought it was funny at the time" may not be enough of an explanation then.

Posting videos/pictures of kids by parents runs along the same lines. What's cute now, may not be all that cute in a few years, and may be very embarrassing if not life altering years down the road. It may also be giving up critical information to people who are out to do harm to kids, perhaps yours. Personally, I'd suggest parents error on the side of caution and refrain from posting stuff about the kids. I'm not saying it's going to happen, I'm just saying I'd avoid the risks because you never really know.

Re:As sick as it is..

[Kjella]

.. There will always be sick people imagining things in pictures or videos that are not there.

That covers misinterpreting innocent actions or creative editing but people sexualize things entirely on their own, which is why we have rule 34, all the erotic fan-fic, people ogling swimsuit catalogs when they didn't have pr0n and so on. The reasoning here is like saying that because the Harry Potter movies made a lot of people have the hots for Emma Watson the movies must be soft porn. Basically if you're going to remove all the innocent material that could be fodder for someone's spank bank like kids doing gymnastics or yoga you'd better dress everyone up in burkas right now.

Re:As sick as it is..

[sjames]

you'd better dress everyone up in burkas right now.

There's almost certainly a few who would find that to be "hot" and about 100 times as many trolls who will claim they do too.

Re:As sick as it is..

[amicusNYCL]

Seriously, this is absurd. Literally the only difference in "proper" or "improper" use is the intent of the person watching it, and now they want to try to regulate intent? The content itself is not the problem, it's the intent of the viewer that's the problem, so why do people think they can A) determine and B) regulate that intent?

Re:As sick as it is..

[Nethemas the Great]

Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but believe it or not, there's more than one reason for children to be present on the Internet. It would be wrong to allow some pervs from eastern Europe, et al. to spoil it for the overwhelming majority of the legitimate, innocent content out there for and by children. There seems to be a lot of hand waving surrounding this topic arguing for the equivalent of shutting down playgrounds, water parks, etc. because some perverted letch might be leveraging them for his jollies. As a father of two, with connected kids I'm keenly aware of all the great content out there. I'm also aware of the filth. The alternative Elsa-Anna videos were especially frustrating for a time. Its a reality and a reason for ensuring we educate our kids, as well as watch out for them. You know, a reason to do our job as parents.

I'm also pretty sure Google could do more to address the pervs. Hopefully this guy's video suffices for a sufficient kick in the pants to patrol the comments, reposts, etc. a bit better. I find it a bit challenging to believe they don't have the reasonable ability to put some algorithms on the job. It doesn't take much for ML algorithms to be trained to detect children in a video coinciding with timestamp links and lecherous comments.

Re:As sick as it is..

[gweihir]

Indeed. It is pretty hard to see how anybody is getting exploited here. The test for exploitation (the subject is harmed) seems to fail completely. This panic is not new though. In fact, a pretty large part of the human population will be offended by anybody female being shown at all, and this is going in that direction eventually. Do we really want to go that way?

Re:As sick as it is..

[gweihir]

So the problem are the comments, not the videos?

Re:As sick as it is..

[gweihir]

.... you'd better dress everyone up in burkas right now.

That is probably pretty much the original reasoning behind the burka anyways.

Re:As sick as it is..

[serviscope_minor]

Of course I would: free meat is free meat.

Re:As sick as it is..

[AmiMoJo]

It's hardly a new thing. There have always been public events for children, or maybe more like their parents, to show off their ballet skills or whatever. A few years ago there was a panic over parents taking photos of their kids at swimming events or even just playing football.

Re:As sick as it is..

[gweihir]

Seriously, this is absurd. Literally the only difference in "proper" or "improper" use is the intent of the person watching it, and now they want to try to regulate intent?

They do and they have done so in the past. What do you think the real reason for an all-seeing "God" is? It is to censor and enforce restrictions on intent, nothing less. As more and more people see through that old scum these days, they are now trying other ways to control what people dare to think. They are starting with something where they think many people will agree, but of course, this is planned to be extended as soon as they won this battle.

Re:As sick as it is..

[AmiMoJo]

The problem is that they treat YouTube like social media, but it's not really. On Facebook they can post the video and only their friends of the gymnastics group can see and comment on it. Anyone posting inappropriate stuff gets booted out.

YouTube doesn't have that kind of access control. Visibility is either everyone or no-one, comments are either on or off.

Re:As sick as it is..

[wisnoskij]

Yes and no.
First off, their are loads of little girls who made videos specifically to be sexually suggestive, and I guarantee you their are also adults filming these girls specifically trying to create sexually suggestive content. AKA, some of these content simply is CP from intent to execution.

Other content is or course a gray area. They just want attention, their parents want them to by the next Miley Cyrus and they naturally gravitate to sexually suggestive content because 1) that is what their idols do and 2) that is what gets them views.

And then their are probably loads of completely innocent videos.

But all of these categories share 1 similarity, the only people watching them are pedophiles.

At first I thought that what does it matter, of course Disney is not advocating pedophilia, and it makes sense for them to want to advertise to pedophiles and they are likely to buy their merchandise. But I can see that they would not want to be seen as a brand that pedophiles like.

Re:As sick as it is..

[wisnoskij]

Yes, and off of YT they are often not even clothed. And sometimes the parent who thinks its adorable, is instead a parent, pimp, or other who is simply trying to maximize revenue any way possible.

The world and particularly the internet is full of people and organizations who live off of grooming children and selling sexual content they create. I guarantee that at least some of the children in these videos have content on other websites behind a pay filter hosted in non-extradition counties.

It makes sense that Disney would not want to be in associated with these people.

Re:As sick as it is..

[PhrostyMcByte]

So the problem are the comments, not the videos?

Half the problem is the comments. The other half (also demonstrated in the video) is people copying & reposting these videos under throwaway accounts.

It seems like Youtube needs both a way for parents to prevent unsupervised postings from their children, as well as a way to better track these obvious abuse cases.

And there's the opposite side of the coin

[DontBeAMoran]

Channels such as Naomi 'SexyCyborg' Wu, where I'm not quite sure if people are watching her for what she does, or what she looks like.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[Anonymous Coward]

She's an adult who can make the content she wants and it really doesn't matter why others might like her work. She seems like a fun lady who does fun things and is fun to look at, and that's just fine.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[Luckyo]

Except that she is very vocal about the fact that she has already crossed the puritan wing of SJW movement and got deplatformed from various platforms by these puritans in the past.

https://medium.com/@therealsex...

The moment the same powerful cabal gets a chance to finish wiping her digital presence off the internet, they will. They already showed no qualms in doing so in the past, to her or anyone else they deem guilty of "wrongthink".

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[Luckyo]

You can tell them "no" all you won't. It won't help people like Naomi Wu when she gets deplatformed. If anything, you telling then "no" hurts people like her, because your "no" is used as evidence of her wrongthink.

Because while you indeed aren't their customers, they do exert significant control over the platforms people like her use to publish their work for you, and get payment from you for their work. The story you can read in that medium article isn't even half of the story. Her account was throttled hard on youtube (and still remains throttled to this day according to her latest claims), she got deplatformed a few more times and so on.

>What about YouTube income? Very low. On October 8th YouTube suddenly throttled my account by 70-80%. No drop-off- full stop. I had many YouTube experts look at my stats, all agreed it was not organic or a result of anything I was doing. After several weeks of negotiation with YouTube, one day they suddenly let off- now it's one throttled by 40%. But it's much, much harder- all the stats are off from what they were for the past year even though updates are popular and more frequent. I can prove it, all I can do it work harder, so I am. But it means that YouTube ad income is not very much, and could disappear the minute YouTube gets pressured to defund my channel. Which is sure to happen given my track record.

Source: her own comment with clarification on her video on https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Folks in question are not just powerful. They also hold a one mean grudge, and are more than willing to go to great lengths to push it.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[Luckyo]

Just out of interest, are you having problems with dosage of your psychotropic medication? Because these bouts of insanity of yours seem to come in really weird bursts, followed by silence for a while.

You should see your MD about that.

Re:And there's the opposite side of the coin

[amicusNYCL]

Why does it matter? Serious question.

In addition to dictating what people are allowed to watch, are you suggesting also trying to dictate why they should be watching it?

Re:And there's the opposite side of the coin

[hoofie]

Look the first time you watch some of her videos, let be honest it's quite easy on the eye.....

After a few of them you really don't notice that aspect anymore as the content she presents is too interesting - you are a true geek if you can do that.

She has been shamefully treated though and comes across as quite a lovely person.

Re:And there's the opposite side of the coin

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Sounds a lot like thought crime.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[Stan92057]

Looking at the linked video for a bout 30 second her fn tits were hanging out the bottom of her very low cut shirt that's not kids content nor should it be. SO ya i can see major ad buyers like Disney bailing they should. That said I haven't a clue how old she is either but im guessing 17-18 if 17 No way in HELL would i allow my minor daughter to post such a video. If shes not a minor well shes free to do as she wishes buy shouldn't expect people to pay for her content or even question them if they decide to not too. we don't need to sexualize kids they have enough on their plates and ya will figure it out with the help of youtube or even porn.

Re:And there's the opposite side of the coin

[freeze128]

I often wonder if she is *REALLY* a cyborg, though...

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[Luckyo]

Kids content?

She's in her twenties doing DYI tech stuff. This is stuff watched by mostly adult men in their 20s and 30s, her age group. What are you talking about?

Re:And there's the opposite side of the coin

[gweihir]

Nothing less than total control over others will satisfy the current generation (well, all generations really) of authoritarian scum. The sad thing is that these people are again being listened too. As if the numerous fascist, stalinist and other authoritarian catastrophes the human race has caused in the past are not enough and we need some more.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[AmiMoJo]

She is also an accomplished engineer. She has a great deal of skill when it comes to 3D modelling and printing/CNC, particularly an ability to conceive of a product and turn it into something workable quickly.

She has done a lot of China too, especially promoting open source. She is responsible for the first three open source hardware products out of China. She went to the manufacturer of some 3D printers, convinced them to open source the design, helped them do it and meet all the requirements, and got it certified. Gave them a nice sales boost too as westerners love open source hardware. She also helped take some of the stigma off Chinese products, demonstrating that they can be good quality and that the manufacturer can engage with the western world.

There is also the Sinobit, a single board computer for learning. She does a lot to help kids learn about engineering. The design is a little bit like the British Microbit board, but with a larger LED display because the British one is too small to display Chinese characters. Again, open source.

I'm amazed that she kept going after western journalists from Vice nearly destroyed her. They put her in real danger - I won't get into it because that would just be compounding the problem, but suffice to say many people would have gone into hiding after that.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[AmiMoJo]

What happened to her has nothing to so with "SJWs". It was Vice journalists (particularly Sarah Jeong) who screwed her over by reneging on an agreement they had to not discuss certain things in their article. She lives in China, it's not safe to be putting out articles like that.

Vice are not SJWs. They are just scummy, low grade journalists with flexible morals looking for a story. Their only agenda is self promotion and building their own careers. There is no ideology. There was so "wrongthink" here, they just threw Wu under the bus to make a quick buck and then refused to even acknowledge it, let along put things right.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[Luckyo]

I have no problems with holding puritanical opinions on human body. I only have problems with pushing such ideas on people who aren't in any close relationship to one holding such ideas.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[RedK]

Vice are now some of the biggest SJWs out there, stop gaslighting all the time.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[AmiMoJo]

Anti-union, anti-rights and equality, covering up sexual misconduct, enabling people like Sarah Jeong who actual SJWs despise... They don't sound like SJWs.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[BringsApples]

Every time I see "this guy" post, I feel like it's not a single person, but rather an assumed personality that is commonly taken, here on slashdot, by those with pent up anger.

Of course, if I'm wrong, and it is a guy, then I'll probably get shouted at too, about how I'm a lying nazi faggot plastic-eating pedophile satan-worshiping {trump-supporter|obama-supporter} conspiracy-theorist that plays the trumpet to loud at night.

But I'll just have that guy know: His hosts file kicks ass.

Re:And there's the opposite side of the coin

[DontBeAMoran]

At least two parts of her are artificial in nature, she confirmed it herself.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[squiggleslash]

If you extend the definition of SJW to mean "Anyone I don't like who says something I disagree with occasionally" then sure they're SJWs. In that respect, AmiMojo is wrong because SJWism is a meaningless word that applies to pretty much everyone, and yet pretty much no-one these days.

What is true is that normally when people refer to SJWs they're saying they're vaguely left wing and vaguely concerned about racism or sexism. Vice definitely does not fall under that category - it's usually the target of people with those concerns, not a ally to them.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[DontBeAMoran]

That said I haven't a clue how old she is either but im guessing 17-18.

You're right, you don't have a fucking clue. Asians women tend to look much younger than their actual age, at least from our western point of view.

Re:And there's the opposite side of the coin

[DontBeAMoran]

It does not matter to me, I'm just curious if she would have as many followers if she didn't have her breast implants.
It's a good move on her part for exploiting the male psyche, though.

Re:And there's the opposite side of the coin

[wisnoskij]

Well for good or ill that currently is our laws. It is simply illegal for people to create content intended to be masturbated to where the star(s) are girls under age. If you don't think that any of these YT videos are this, than you have your head in the sand.

Similarly, I suspect having/watching video content you yourself consider to be CP makes it CP... Porn is a nebulous consent with regard to the law, it is all about intent. I defiantly would not want to be in a courtroom trying to argue that while I did not use it in that fashion those videos on my laptop can technically be watched while not masturbating.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[AmiMoJo]

I should point out that my goal here, which I appreciate may be too subtly indicated sometimes, is that when you try to nail people down on what an SJW actually is they basically describe the person they are complaining about in that moment. Well, more accurately they describe the imaginary boogyman with the same face as the person they are complaining about.

BTW, thanks for your efforts over the years. I feel like I've really made it as a star of social media now that I have my own personal long-term trolls, with memes just for me. The fact that you made a drinking game out of me triggering anti-SJWs is really heart-warming.

Only thing is, and I don't mean to nit-pick, but... The 'J' in my name is capitalized. It might seem like a small thing but it's important to me. Thanks buddy.

Re:And there's the opposite side of the coin

[amicusNYCL]

It is simply illegal for people to create content intended to be masturbated to where the star(s) are girls under age.

No, that's not illegal. Section 2256 of Title 18, United States Code, defines child pornography as any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor. If someone masturbates to kids playing on a playground, and that person creates an animation of kids playing on a playground, that's not illegal. Similarly, a parent's pictures of their naked children may not constitute child pornography as long as the pictures are not sexually suggestive. A 15 year old girl uploading a video of her showing off her cleavage, while otherwise clothed, is not illegal.

If you don't think that any of these YT videos are this, than you have your head in the sand.

Hmm, are you trying to suggest that sex sells? That's amazing, we need to alert everyone.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[Luckyo]

I understand that between the Covington and the Smollett, far leftists have nothing left but to desperately try to gaslight people about their involvement in this particular cultural insanity as various aspects of it keep coming out.

But you being desperate does not make you any less incredulously unbelievable. If anything, it makes you so unbelievable, that you cross the realm where it's just plain funny that you would even try.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[AmiMoJo]

I don't know what the Covington and the Smollett are or what they have to do with me or Vice.

What I do know is that most of the left leaning people I know, especially the ones who identify as socialists, don't like Vice or what they did.

Also, since apparently I'm the prototypical SJW, and Vice piss me off, they can't be SJWs either. Whatever an SJW is. Still can't get a clear answer on that one.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[AmiMoJo]

At the risk of further raising your blood-alcohol level, I really wish there was a way to get notified of AC replies to my comments because I often miss yours.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[AmiMoJo]

I guess that is an American site, so using the American political scale... For example they rate the BBC as left of centre, where as by European standards they are either dead centre or a little to the right. In fact over the last decade or so they have definitely drifted right a bit.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[Luckyo]

I'm not going to bother with the silly grasping at straws where you continue with incredulously silly narrative even when called on it by several people. The only thing I have to address is the "but if I'm [x] and I'm pissed by [y], they can't be [x]".

This is a common tactic in religious circles to denounce disgraced members of their particular faith. "Terrorist muslims aren't real muslims, even though they literally follow the Quran". etc. It's meaningful only to the faithful protecting his faith from damage caused by recognising just how awful of actions his faith has induced in other people.

It's utterly irrelevant to those outside the faith, as they have no investment in maintaining base tenets of said faith. They simply see faithful parties having a theological disagreement on some limited interpretations, while sharing most of the belief structure. It's why overwhelming majority of islamic terror is done to muslims. The worst enemy is the enemy that shows you the problems with your beliefs while representing them.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[AmiMoJo]

I think maybe you mistook me for an American. I googled those names and they seem to be related to stuff happening in the US.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[Luckyo]

And yet, you chose to defend Vice, a US company. This grasping of straws follows the same principle as I noted above - it's so incredulously unbelievable that it's hilarious that you would even try arguing it this way.

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[AmiMoJo]

Defend Vice? They are a bunch of asshats. I have no love for them whatsoever. I was ranting about how scummy Vice are just yesterday.

You seem to be very, very confused. Do you have me mixed up with someone else?

Re: And there's the opposite side of the coin

[Luckyo]

I do love the way you're persistently gaslighting with every post though. At least you're consistent, if utterly awful at it.

Re:And there's the opposite side of the coin

[freeze128]

Yeah, they're implants, but are they CYBERNETIC, or just saline? Do they even have Bluetooth?

To be shortly followed by...

[hymie]

...people complaining about how YouTube pulled the video of their children being adorable.

Re:To be shortly followed by...

[zlives]

FTFY ...people complaining about how YouTube pulled the video of their children before they could be exploited by the parents lack of self esteem and vicarious living through children as the only justifiable answer to committing an hero

Re:To be shortly followed by...

[Luckyo]

Out of sight, out of mind, eh?

Hint: just because the spotlight isn't shining at the problem any more doesn't mean that problem went away.

Re:To be shortly followed by...

[Mashiki]

That's not really the problem. There a few actual problems, one being that Youtube knows that there's a pedo problem already, they have an automatic comment restriction system that kicks in on a lot of kids videos. Another problem is that, it's trivial to find the content and as pointed out in the video the comment section is cancerous and full of pedo crap. The real problem is that the pedos will start telling the kids what to do in the comment section, then the kid starts doing it. "Kids being cute" is perfectly fine. "Kids being cute" then pedos trying to groom them to preform sexual acts in front of the camera on the other hand is a problem. Enough of a problem that here in Canadaland that nearly all of the police to school programs(i.e. where they go in and do something fun with the kids) directly talks about why doing these things for strangers isn't a good idea.

Kids think it's innocent tech, and it is. Parents are using tech as baby sitters/keeps them out of their hair and that's not good. They also are lacking in teaching the kids why personal privacy and whatnot is important. I don't see any easy answers to this. Censorship isn't the solution, restrictions are the better solution. But it would be far better all around if the parents weren't shoveling their kids off on tech.

Re:To be shortly followed by...

[djinn6]

Why wouldn't censorship be a solution?

Kids watching YouTube makes them money. Kids uploading videos generates bad press. Block all videos with kids in them and the problem goes away.

Re:To be shortly followed by...

[Mashiki]

Censorship isn't the solution because it begets the slippery slope. See the UK for example, which first started restricting "allowable types of porn" and whatnot, and now are pushing for you to buy a porn pass.

Blocking all videos with kids in them, would mean that videos that the RCMP does, or OPP would no longer be available either. It's similar to the "everything looks like a nail, when you're holding a hammer" approach.

Re:To be shortly followed by...

[djinn6]

If you only have a hammer, then you should use it until you get yourself a better tool. It's much easier to build a ML model to identify children in general than to identify children in potentially compromising positions, especially when you don't know what some freak might be turned on by.

I also don't see how this can be a slippery slope. Having separate platforms for kids and adults to post content on makes a lot of sense. There's a good reason why schools are segregated by age, not the least of which is the potential for abuse.

Re:To be shortly followed by...

[doconnor]

Right on schedule: https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

Re:To be shortly followed by...

[Mashiki]

If you only have a hammer, then you should use it until you get yourself a better tool. It's much easier to build a ML model to identify children in general than to identify children in potentially compromising positions, especially when you don't know what some freak might be turned on by.

So we wait another 5-10 years? Cause ML is a pretty shit solution in the short term.

I also don't see how this can be a slippery slope. Having separate platforms for kids and adults to post content on makes a lot of sense. There's a good reason why schools are segregated by age, not the least of which is the potential for abuse.

For one thing, there isn't a separate platform between the two. Second various laws in various countries require a minimum age, understanding of the agreement, and/or a parent/guardian to grant the account. Third, I'm not sure what school you went to, but most people on /. can probably point to a time when k-12 was a single school with a small number of students unlike the gigantic central-plex mega schools that have replaced them over the last 20 years. The school I went to was K-8, 9-13 wasn't very far down the road. You basically went to school with the same group of people for years and everybody knew each other. Even the country kids went to particular schools, while city kids went to another. The education taught at those schools was also focused around what they knew and the lessons formed around what they had learned.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Any content -- including comments -- that endangers minors is abhorrent ..." unless the minors are Catholic school students, apparently.

It won't work

[TWX]

From Youtube: "Any content -- including comments -- that endangers minors is abhorrent and we have clear policies prohibiting this on YouTube. We took immediate action by deleting accounts and channels, reporting illegal activity to authorities and disabling violative comments," a spokeswoman for YouTube said in an email.

It won't work. The fundamental problem is that it's expensive to editorialize/police content and advertising. Major television networks employ standards boards, local television stations have station managers and other staff, and even cable networks have to maintain staff to both sell and to police the content of television shows and of ads. These entities have to spend a sizable amount on salary for these censors, and even being limited to airtime that's limited to 1440 minutes in a 24-hour period they still get it wrong.

There are claims that 5 billion videos are watched daily on Youtube, and more than 400,000 hours of content is added to Youtube every day. There's simply no way to keep up as censors with that kind of content. Hell, Google can't even keep its ad delivery networks free from malicious ads, how do they expect to keep inappropriate content off when those uploading content don't have a strong financial tie with a particular salesman or censor?

Re:It won't work

[Aristos Mazer]

Assign every content uploader to be the personal censor for a random other uploader. And then pick a third random uploader to be the metamoderator for the first censor. Shuffle every week. You can't upload if you haven't caught up on your backlog of reviewing and rejecting or approving whoever you're assigned to. Make the random assignments balanced -- people who upload lots of stuff are assigned other people who upload lots of stuff.

Re:It won't work

[mark-t]

You can't upload if you haven't caught up on your backlog of reviewing and rejecting or approving whoever you're assigned to.

What happens if you approve stuff that the metamoderator disagrees with? Do you also get blocked from uploading?

Bear in mind that your suggested system is simply self-reinforcing, and does not generally allow for the insertion of new or potentially even controversial information, even if there is an otherwise objectively legitimate reason for it.

Re: It won't work

[mark-t]

It is more likely, in fact, that you will simply tend towards mediocrity.

Entropy increases in any closed system, including social networks.

Re:It won't work

[Nethemas the Great]

Of course there is. ML algorithms could easily screen stuff. Those 400,000 daily hours uploaded is backed by the computational horsepower to support that. You're not asking your personal Dell PC to check this stuff. There's any number of low cost risk mitigation strategies that could be employed. For example, while helping my kids navigate Youtube I've found that much of the pervy stuff comes in the form of reposts. That is, someone ripping off content from a legitimate channel and posting the trimmed lascivious versions on their own channel. Simply scanning for reposts would be a boon to huge swaths of content creators, in addition to keeping the pervs at bay. As a parent I'd love it if there was a kid friendly "whitelist" ability where my kids would be allowed to search around and find stuff, but post a popup asking for parent permission before allowing them enter an unlisted channel. Or, perhaps something a bit more sophisticated where content creators could get a "reputation" score and I could set the threshold for when I'd need to give the OK.

Re:It won't work

[gweihir]

No, it cannot. ML is maybe 90% accurate if really, really good. You need a lot more than that here.

Re: It won't work

[djinn6]

If left alone, social networks actually trend towards cliques. They make it easy for like-minded people to find each other and reinforce their off-the-wall ideas.

Re:It won't work

[AmiMoJo]

In this case though all they need to do is disable comments. They are not objecting to the content of the video, just the comments from people jacking off over them.

Of course the problem with that is that some of those channels want comments, because they create engagement which translates to $$$. Even just people reading the comments while the video plays adds to its watch time.

Re:It won't work

[Nethemas the Great]

You don't need to be 100%. You don't need to have the ML remove 100% and you don't need to match 100% to improve the situation in a significant and meaningful way. An example ML involved strategy that I believe would be very effective would be a multi-stage filtration system system. Stage one, the ML, grabs the low hanging fruit--everything hitting a sufficiently high confidence threshold. Stage two, Google staff get handed stuff the ML flagged as likely, but not having sufficient confidence to automatically filter. Stage three, end-users flag inappropriate material missed by one and two.

Re:It won't work

[gweihir]

As this is a panic, you need 100%. Seriously. Any single case left will be hyped all out of proportions.

Sounds like a slippery slope situation.

[fahrbot-bot]

Matt Watson, a video blogger, posted a 20-minute clip detailing how comments on YouTube were used to identify certain videos in which young girls were in activities that could be construed as sexually suggestive, such as posing in front of a mirror and doing gymnastics.

Just about *any* activity can be sexually suggestively to someone, somewhere. Not judging, just sayin' ...

Re:Sounds like a slippery slope situation.

[DontBeAMoran]

Tell me about it! Who came out with the perverse idea of a four slots toaster?!

Re:Sounds like a slippery slope situation.

[Luckyo]

In this case though, the behaviour is often overtly suggestive and is literally the point of the video, down to it being mentioned in the click bait video name. One comedy youtuber I occasionally watch openly mocked one channel that did this to an extreme degree quite a while ago. Literally girl in early teens in outfits highlighted in the video clickbait topic as "making her boyfriend jealous" doing a rather awkward attempt at acting like a porn star right before sex scene starts. Then making out with her boyfriend on camera for a few seconds.

Extremely cringy stuff, the kind I can understand early teens experiment with their sexuality and without parental control doing. Now I don't really care if that's what they do amongst themselves, as I'm not a puritan, but "what the fuck are their parents doing" wouldn't get out of my head specifically because this was on youtube. Putting that stuff on public display at that age is likely going to haunt all of the participants for a long while. Any ad revenue gained is unlikely to be worth it in a long run.

I'm very much in disagreement that this is something that youtube needs to manage though, unless those actions are specifically illegal. This is more of a "social workers, shouldn't you take a closer look at this particular family?" kind of a case in my view, as problems here are likely of a kind that will not go away just because these folks get banned off youtube.

What this really shows

[SuperKendall]

This just illuminates there is not anything that cannot be ruined by having comments that are not heavily policed - if you cannot police said comments, do not allow them.

It also shows an unexpected misuse of a simple tool - likes and recommendation engines. But here I really don't see any way to solve this, because what if someone really WANTS to see gymnastic related videos? That by itself is harmless or even useful. I don't think we should break all useful tools just because someone can misuse them - instead why not use that data to try and catch out people who are misusing the matching engines. and try to catch them out in something more illegal?

Society seems bent to hide or mask any behavior even slightly disagreeable. But then how can you know who the people are that hold opinions you do not like? I greatly prefer a world where people can say what the like, and I can derive my sense of who they are from it.

Re:What this really shows

[djinn6]

But here I really don't see any way to solve this, because what if someone really WANTS to see gymnastic related videos? That by itself is harmless or even useful.

Simple. You pay for it.

YouTube and almost all YouTube creators rely on ad revenue. If enough people make a fuss over something, no matter how dumb, advertisers will demand change and YouTube must comply.

The only way to change that is to stop relying on ad revenue, but YouTube Red / Premium didn't really take off.

Who says what's suggestive?

[GregMmm]

So if I did have a daughter who was into gymnastics, and I posted her winning the super duper first prize, is this sexually suggestive? I believe someone out there will find it that way. So where to we draw the line. Would I get in trouble for posting such a video, if "someone" says this is sexually suggestive?

Re:Who says what's suggestive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah but it doesn't need to be sexually suggestive. If it "could be construed as sexually suggestive" (by whoever writes the rules at that particular moment and for that particular video) then it will be. Next thing you'll be doxxed and you'll have child protection services knocking at your door, with their mind set because they align with the crazy social marxists. You think I jest?

Re: Who says what's suggestive?

[edris90]

Get in trouble is not about right and wrong. It's about whether someone with the capability and the well perceives you to be in the way of what they want. if so they're identify something about you that they can exploit to create a dialogue where you are an evil.

Re:Who says what's suggestive?

[drinkypoo]

Would I get in trouble for posting such a video, if "someone" says this is sexually suggestive?

If you don't monetize the video, you probably won't have a problem. It's the threat to their income streams that galvanized Youtube. It's not like they actually give a shit about your kids, or anyone else's.

Re:Who says what's suggestive?

[Mashiki]

So if I did have a daughter who was into gymnastics, and I posted her winning the super duper first prize, is this sexually suggestive? I believe someone out there will find it that way. So where to we draw the line. Would I get in trouble for posting such a video, if "someone" says this is sexually suggestive?

Some where someone probably would. But here's the question, is your daughter turning around and then reading through the comments and preforming specific actions that are sexually suggestive or sexual because people were asking for it. See in most cases, people are talking about the latter and not the former. Youtube has an automatic filtering system to close comments on videos that she's posting, and in turn youtube already knows it has a problem asking kids to engage in sexually suggestive or provocative actions already.

Re:Who says what's suggestive?

[gweihir]

Eventually, if this panic goes on, this will have your daughter being taken away and you being put in prison.

Re: Who says what's suggestive?

[gweihir]

Very true.

Google should not be a Cop

[Jarwulf]

Sad how things ratchet to authoritarianism. People should stop banging on Youtube/Google/etc to take down everything they don't like and then act surprised when they start censoring and deplatforming based on political viewpoints. Google/etc is not and should not play cop. If the law has a problem it should handle it with Google on as narrow as possible case by case basis. But Google/MS/etc are not completely blameless. They seem to enjoy playing cop themselves a little too much and have set themselves up as such rather than emphasizing they're just the messenger. So they should not be surprised at the backlash. Having said that if your mind automatically goes to the threat of pedophilia at the sight of a girl dancing or wearing a bathing suit, maybe that says more about you.

'Soft core'

[philmarcracken]

Does 'soft core' acts actually pose any serious mental damage to the children? Are these acts volitional?

Re:'Soft core'

[Jarwulf]

Scrolling through the video it looks like this 'softcore child porn' is mostly videos often recorded by the girls themselves dancing and or wearing swimsuits. So basically every parent who has recorded beach day and anyone who has walked down a beach and looked at people is now to be considered a child molester. This is where we're at as a society today and everybody is too terrified to speak out against this.

Re:'Soft core'

[gweihir]

Indeed. This stuff is not porn in any normal way, it is only porn in the minds of some deviants and the maker of this video seems to be one of them. (Same principle as the most extreme anti-homosexuals are usually secretly one of them...) It seems the potential harm is rather limited and does not justify this outcry at all. Probably some censorship agenda being pushed as well, as happens so often these days.

Re:'Soft core'

[Shotgun]

And don't dare let your children go to the mall. The larger than life posters of underwear clad young women made up to look underage outside of Victoria Secret will make heads explode.

Every time this happens to Google/Youtube

[Leslie43]

I just have to laugh...
Gives them a dose of the hell they give people who host user generated content (chat forums, image hosts, etc..).

I hope our A.I. overloads come for their heads (and Zucker_Borg) first.

YouTube won't pull the video

[rsilvergun]

they'll just de-monetize it and won't promote it (since they can't monetize it).

It's actually really annoying. Lots of good YouTube content has gone poof thanks to this. Stuff like Glove and Boots, Freaky Frank, Talking Classics and the like can't make a living on YouTube since the "adocalypse". A few channels made the jump to Pateron but that only works if you've already got a following. New up and comers needed that YouTube ad revenue to get going.

Somewhat annoyingly the hoards of anti-SJW channels seem to be doing just fine while stuff like Cult of Dusty has the bulk of his videos de-monetized. Though I do get a chuckle seeing an Advert for Donald Trump hitting me up for cash on Secular Talk's videos about Bernie.

Re: YouTube won't pull the video

[Anonymous Coward]

See, when your content does not appeal to a minority of the population it is really easy to get viewers. It also helps people are sick to death of idealogs telling them how terrible they are.

Re:YouTube won't pull the video

[AmiMoJo]

Can't really force advertisers to advertise on videos they don't want to be associated with, so we need another solution.

How about some kind of charity to support worthwhile YouTube channels? Patreon is too specific and people are unwilling to sign up to a dozen $5/month subscriptions, but a charity that supports a large group of channels might work.

I suppose the problem would be people objecting to some of the channels, but at the very least it would be an interesting experiment in seeing if people really are willing to financially support channels they don't agree for the sake of free speech and better content.

Re: Good. Less ads to block

[Locke2005]

Comic Sans, obviously... it's the only thing that font is really appropriate for!

The internet as usual...

[bobbied]

The problem here is that the internet is, by and large, anonymous. You can literally post any steaming pile you like, be as rude, abusive and socially unacceptable as you choose with zero real implications.

The problem here is that there is no personal accountability, at least not really. Sure, you can get TOSed or your account deleted, but it's not like a nymph shift is hard to do. Grab another E-mail, create a new account and post your garbage again and again.

The only real solution I see is to require non-repudiation for all original content. Make it so everybody must be positively identified before your material sees the light of day. Of course, U-Tube would pretty much have to shut down to do something like this.

Re:The internet as usual...

[sjames]

Of course, the problem then is that sometimes anonymity is legitimately needed. For example, when sincerely posting a legitimate political opinion that might piss off the powers that be. Those powers might be government, a grumpy family member, or an employer with extreme opposite political views.

Re:The internet as usual...

[djinn6]

Facebook is not anonymous, yet you see the same stuff. In some cases, you can get people to stop by raising big stink with their employer and getting them fired from their job. But I'm not sure that'd be a good route to go down.

If Slashdot or someone on Slashdot could send everything I posted here to my manager, I wouldn't be posting here at all. I'd rather deal with the shit hole that is 4chan than to risk my job for an internet discussion.

Kinnek also gone...

[CoreDreamStudios]

Hi Dan, Thank you for your message. This was brought to our attention yesterday and we have pulled all ads from Youtube. Kinnek does not condone this abhorrent behavior and until the issue is resolved, we have excluded all ads from Youtube. Best, Kimmy Shiller

Re:What?

[HiThere]

Sorry, but due to network effects Facebook is a de-facto monopoly. *I* may choose to avoid it, but I was past 30 before I had a choice.

Now you can reasonably claim that this is an inappropriate use of the word "censor", and arguments can be found to support that claim. But language is not "set in stone", and the use of "censor" to denote authoritarian removal of content from a communication dates back to at least the 1940's, and probably earlier.

Even if it didn't, one could argue that since IP assignment is controlled by the government that a company using IP based communication is acting as an arm of the government. One doesn't hear complaints about using the word "censored" when privately owned newspapers in China remove a story that the newspaper guesses would be politically offensive, even though the action is performed by a private party without any government intervention. (OK, that's an extreme example, but it demonstrates that the letter of the dictionary definition doesn't control the meaning of the word.)

Re:What?

[sexconker]

Hey, retard. Censorship doesn't have to be done by the government to be censorship.

Read the fucking article

[Orgasmatron]

Or rather, watch the damn video before commenting. This is probably among the 10 worst summaries I've read on this site, and I've been here just about every day since nearly the beginning.

This isn't a problem about parents uploading videos of their kids, or of kids uploading their own videos. It isn't about the videos at all.

The problem is that there is a side of youtube that most of us would never find on our own. But if you know it is there, you can get to it with one search and two clicks, and shown in the video.

Most of the videos there have been downloaded from other users and re-uploaded under a different account so that the parents and kids have no idea this is happening. The comments on the re-uploaded videos are full of creepy comments and timestamps to suggestive moments, or to other videos.

Once down the rabbit hole, all of the recommended video links are to other videos of the same type with the same disgusting comments and links.

Re:Read the fucking article

[bill_mcgonigle]

I guess what I find really amusing is, Disney, Nestle, and Others would seem to be pedos as well. I mean, their whole market is to like kids.

Disney is famous for hypersexualizing young girls (Lyndsey Lohan, Brittany Spears, Miley Cyrus, et. al.) which fucks them up in young adulthood, and even paid for lawyers at Mirimax to defend Harvey Weinstein when he was diddling young gals on his casting couch.

YouTube is, at a minimum, competition for Disney.

Nestle "kills babies" for profit

[quenda]

So Nestle is making a fuss over videos of kids eating lollipops?

Nestle, the company who knowingly killed how many thousands of babies, pushing baby formulae in third world counties?
And have made billions stunting the development of millions of babies by promoting the same products to mothers who were capable of breast feeding?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Nestle "kills babies" for profit

[serviscope_minor]

So Nestle is making a fuss over videos of kids eating lollipops?

No, they're making a fuss over something they think harms their brand image.

Nestle, the company who knowingly killed how many thousands of babies, pushing baby formulae in third world counties?

And now you see WHY they care so much about something that might harm their brand image.

Re:Nestle "kills babies" for profit

[magusxxx]

Let's not forget the young african children who were slave labor at cocoa plantations. Fully explained in the documentary 'The Dark Side of Chocolate.'

Alex Jones

[bill_mcgonigle]

I'm just sitting here laughing because, as crazy as that bastard is, YouTube proudly deplatformed Alex Jones who is constantly railing against child sex-trafficking rings.

And all the while it turned out that YouTube was the one promoting such things with its technology and/or lack of care.

Not that I'm expecting one single moment of introspection from YouTube.

Re:Alex Jones

[AmiMoJo]

Alex Jones railing against child sex-trafficking is the very definition of virtue signalling. He doesn't really care, he just does it to have something that makes his detractors look bad. "YouTube bans child sex-trafficking activist" sounds bad, until you realize that Alex Jones has been harassing the victims of Sandy Hook for years, and that's not even the worst of it.

Re:Alex Jones

[thegarbz]

YouTube proudly deplatformed Alex Jones who is constantly railing against child sex-trafficking rings.

It may surprise you to lean that Youtube did not deplatform him for his stance on this.

And all the while it turned out that YouTube was the one promoting such things with its technology and/or lack of care.

I just masturbated to this post. You need to be banned. Why is Slashdot facilitating your disgusting post.

#outrage.

Not that I'm expecting one single moment of introspection from YouTube.

Oh wow. You actually finished your post with something smart. I'm sure you didn't intend to, but hey accidents happen.

And they are complaining

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Every year or so, there's another news article about some mommy blogger who's children just found out every moment of their life was memorialized online - and they are very angry. It's usually followed by the mommy blogger expressing no remorse, and talking about how they are still going to post everything their kid does (including this whole argument), usually with a fig leaf or two about some privacy "protecting" nothing that shows they "compromise".

Hypocrisy

[ThomasD3]

Disney toys and clothes: Made for children, by children.

Re: Good. Less ads to block

[Shotgun]

Wing Dings.

Are we talking about the Same YouTube

[rsilvergun]

that de-monetized Call of Duty streamers for violence? YouTube will come down on this like a ton of bricks. Their main concern is keeping advertisers happy. YouTube, like regular TV, is about ads.

Re:Don't forget all the embarassing baby/bathing..

[zugmeister]

conservatives cozying up with Russians while vilifying liberals as communists, or socialists

Really? You might want to look into the links between liberals and those espousing democratic socialism.

The whole Russian collusion thing (you know, that not crime) I keep hearing about is getting to be like a religion. No evidence but people keep prattling on about it like it'll happen someday.

Re:What?

[zugmeister]

That is literally an argument for the legalization of the possession and distribution for child pornography.

Only if you've presupposed that the nature of the material is actually pornographic in nature. At a certain point, you'd think there's a point where a judgement call needs to be made.
What if there's a picture of a car with a kid on a swing way off in the background? Probably safe.
Kid posed in a sexual position without clothes? Probably not.
There's a spectrum in between those two extremes. If we can't make a moral judgement, how do we make the call when a picture is over the limit?
Or did I misunderstand your argument?

Re: Don't forget all the embarassing baby/bathing.

[zugmeister]

Do you seriously consider a politician (or anyone operating at a level where you address Congress) lying to be a noteworthy event?
I'm sure there are any number of reasons why they would lie, but I wouldn't be the right person to explain their actions to you.

Re:What?

[Aristos Mazer]

We are talking about unboxing videos and excess consumption in this fork, not gymnastics.