Slashdot Mirror
YouTube Will Disable Comments on Nearly All Videos With Kids (variety.com)
YouTube said today it will disable the ability for viewers to leave comments on most videos featuring minors, as it tries to contain the damage from a scandal involving child predators leaving coded sexual comments on the site. From a report: YouTube said in a blog post Thursday that over the past week it had already disabled comments from "tens of millions of videos" that could be subject to predatory behavior. Now, it will expand that to suspend comments on virtually all videos featuring young minors, as well as videos featuring older kids that "could be at risk of attracting predatory behavior." In a tweet, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki linked to the update and explained the change: "Recently, there have been some deeply concerning incidents regarding child safety on YouTube. Nothing is more important to us than ensuring the safety of young people on the platform."
Was actually talking about the current "adpocalypse" and its causes, and wondered if youtube wouldn't be eventually working towards disabling comments. In fact, I'd go a step further and start phasing out comments in general. While they increase "engagement", they're so incredibly useless that I definitely wouldn't miss them. Leave chats for livestreams, though, as that actually provides instantaneous feedback that can be valuable.
This is the end of comments on the web as we know it.
As usual, a handful of assholes ruined something for everybody else.
#DeleteFacebook
Wonder how long it'll take the pedos to move their discussions over to Gab's "comment on any webpage" functionality.
Why stop there? YouTube comments are some of the worst on the internet. Disable them for all videos. Nothing of value will be lost.
MORE censorship from the SJW-run social media platforms
In other news YouTube nuked its head office from orbit in order to deal with a mouse found in their cafeteria kitchen.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Youtube comments are pretty much garbage, just ban them all and nothing of value will be lost.
I thought I had seen some incredible feats of hysteria before, but this has to be a new high water mark. Because some comments *might* be left by perverts, we are just getting rid of them altogether? "Featuring minors" also is incredibly vague, would this include anything with child actors? What about reviews of something that featured child actors?
I feel like this is just going to push yet another chunk of the creator base to other platforms, if they exist. It might be time for Youtube to decide on the content it really wants on its platform and then build outward from there, as they have obviously moved (or been forced) away from just a general video sharing service.
What the hell is "bullshit"? Is there an actual bovine inside my screen taking a dump?
Are these "coded sexual comments" somehow secretly raping the servers or what? If they are coded you would expect that nobody outside of the know actually notices or cares. This seems to be a panic-reaction at best. Talk about throwing out the [censored] with the bathwater.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And spectrum is quite an apt word when discussing these comments on a public message board. For technical videos though, like coding, comments are frequently useful. For tech/gadget reviews - also useful. Game review comments - getting less useful. Would be useful to have an aggregate score rather than hundreds of inane comments. Comedy clip comments - the worst! It's ironic that some of the most excruciatingly unfunny comments should follow a comedy clip but there you go.
>> Nothing is more important to us than
If the next world from a company isn't "profit" then the statement is probably a lie.
"Nothing is more important to us than ensuring the safety of young people on the platform." yeah, good luck convincing me that profits is second to that...
However will these attention seeking whores look to get feedback from their followers who love to watch exploited children.
...not only because of your "regular" suspects.
But one of the major problems kids face today, is the endless onslaught of their peers who often will ridicule them, stalk them - too many times leading to possible suicide, because a kid can't handle snide comments as well as adults, will often hide this from their parents, and suffer in silence, shamed by their anonymous schoolmates and cyberbullies who also are kids, and don't quite understand how serious this is before suicide threats become real.
Personally, I think there should be an age-restriction on video uploads. And commenting should be something that could be in closed circuits only, like family and "approved" friends. Then it would be okay, much like a family album online with keys that only invited parties can get.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I wish they would just make YouTube Kids not a useless dumpster filled with trash.
Yes, but only unneutered males.
You've seen the movie "Predator"? It's like that thing, except a child.
Are these "coded sexual comments" somehow secretly raping the servers or what? If they are coded you would expect that nobody outside of the know actually notices or cares. This seems to be a panic-reaction at best. Talk about throwing out the [censored] with the bathwater.
At least some people are of the opinion that the guy who set the ball rolling made most of this up, and basically this is mostly a panic in the grand tradition of such things as the Satanic Child Abuse Panic of a few decades ago...which people are still sorting out the legal fallout of, despite how debunked it is.
I'd honestly start pushing for YT to start at least considering demonetizing videos that get too heavy into whipping up histerias for views--possibly also disabling the view counts from displaying & the video from being able to use its view metrics to go viral, to discourage the people whose motive isn't ad view money but stroking their ego with view counts. Money and/or attention covers two out of three of what seem to be the major motives for setting off these kinds of dumpster fires. (The third is basically major mental health problems of the kind that tends to include paranoid delusions, and you can't ethically force them to take their meds but cutting off publicity will discourage some of them and certainly help keep down the harm.)
... all kid related? Even pewdiepie often features 9 year olds.
Just use Gab, as per an earlier /. story
The kids videos are fucking weird and off-putting. They are designed to get kids to cook on them without taking into account normal socialization of children.
If you want a generation of detached depressed freaks, then keep letting kids watch this stuff.
But as a tax payer I don't want to support your offspring's future of unemployement, drug addiction, and crime.
Tosh was on to this years ago....
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/5sqxnt/tosh-0-seven-super-girls
"...Nothing is more important to us than ensuring the safety of young people on the platform."
Should read:
"...Nothing is more important to us than ensuring the revenue stream provided by young people on the platform."
In other news, Dissenter makes this move completely pointless.
interestingly, my sister watches youtube videos about some very realistic baby dolls, how they are commissioned, put together, reviews about whether they come as ordered or described, their quality and such. The problem is that they are very realistic dolls and so the youtube recognition program is shutting down comments on those videos as well.
Noice Freudian slip, brah. YT's indifference before the news broke last week, and now the ineveitable overreation in the other direction is EXACLY all about the pesos.
So the problem isn't having videos of kids online, it's the comments? And removing comments will remove the problem?
Knowing that other website can act as proxy and them will keep the dubious comments on videos fine, and since they know when a video feature kids, youtube can't remove them?
I guess as long as money is given, they don't mind selling anything.
This happens around the same time that dissenter add-on for most popular browsers came out:
https://dissenter.com/
Should be interesting to see if it manages to become popular enough to replace website implementations for more than just the actual dissenters from mainstream if youtube et al start to clamp down on comment sections that hard.
You have to have a YouTube account to post comments. Which means YouTube could easily change things so that only verified users can post on those videos. People do crazy stuff when they think they won't be caught. Verifying a user's identity would cut 99% of the problem.
Speaking of cutting the the problem, given that they need an account to comment and the amount of tracking that Google and its advertisers do, they almost certainly know exactly who made those comments and could easily pass their details on to a local police force.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"Won't someone think of the children!"
Guns, internet, Speech silencing excuses.
#FreedonToHear what you want us to hear, F Censors/excuses.
You be with the children when on internet, be a good parent.
Who cares? I will use Dissenter instead.
Hahahahahaha
*laughs some more*
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I need to start a back-tracking rumor so that people start playing YT videos backwards trying to find Satanic messages. Moral crisises could be fun to induce or bring back!
Seriously though, this story is hilaribad. Joker levels of so awful it has to be real.
What's with this fucking "predator" bullshit language?
Found the pedophile.
Are they talking about EATING children?! What's with this fucking "predator" bullshit language?
Astonishingly, some words have more than the one literal meaning.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
yesterday's article about gab providing the ability to have comments for every page on the internet in mind, it doesn't matter anymore if your site allows comments or not. except ofcourse, that youtube can now wash their hands in denial as it's no longer their problem.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Wonder how long it'll take the pedos to move their discussions over to {...somewhere else...}
As long as that moving destination isn't hosted by Google, it's find by them: They can claim that they have done their side of the work to avoid becoming the home base of {...latest scarecrow..}, and get all the precious advertising money back.
Dealing with the backlash of having become a "discussion enabler" for {...latest scarecrow...} and potentially losing ad money revenue (if that's the way they finance themselves) is the destination platform's problem. Not youtubes.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Loooool think hard if you give a fuck if youtube comments are censored or even if they exist at all.
Many people use plugins to block them or replace them with commentary from other parts of the internet because the crap isn't even low quality it's negative quality, sure you can have a good chat there if you're lucky but on average you're going to be dumber and madder for subjecting yourself to that shit.
I have a strong feeling you're from a certain paid posting farm that's upset about the prospect of losing easy, poorly moderated access to all those impressionable low intelligence americans.