YouTube last week removed 150,000 disturbing videos as part of a crackdown on channels that pose as family friendly but instead show children in distress, in revealing clothing or appearing to be abused, the company told BuzzFeed News and Vice News recently.
In a blog post, the company acknowledged it had “noticed a growing trend around content on YouTube that attempt to pass as family-friendly, but is clearly not. While some of these videos may be suitable for adults, others are completely unacceptable.”
In response, some companies have paused their ads on YouTube — they include big-name brands like Adidas, Mars and Hewlett-Packard — and YouTube has attracted widespread criticism. Here we answer some questions about this big problem and how YouTube and others have responded.
What are some examples of these disturbing videos?
For the past month, YouTube has been deleting accounts or videos that many people are calling exploitative and disturbing to watch.
For example, one man’s YouTube channel was removed because it featured videos of his young daughters, 4 and 6, in bizarre scenarios including force-feeding, one daughter urinating on the other, or screaming in fear, BuzzFeed News reported last week.
Another channel featured a child shoved into a washing machine, BuzzFeed News reported. And yet another one showed videos of children pretending to be kidnapped or tortured. At one point, the three channels were marked as verified accounts that generated millions of views but each has been shut down, per BuzzFeed.
Earlier in November, The New York Times reported on complaints from parents whose children have been shown videos depicting animated characters in violent, lewd or disturbing scenarios like suicide.
How widespread is this?
YouTube shut down 270 accounts and removed ads from 5 million videos depicting such situations, the company told BuzzFeed News on Monday. In addition, YouTube turned off the ability for people to comment on more than 625,000 videos “targeted by child predators.”
The full extent of problem remains unknown because YouTube relies on digital software to filter videos uploaded by anyone in the public. According to BuzzFeed News, here’s how some users get around those filters:
The creators of such videos often disguise their bizarre, disturbing content as family-friendly and bypass YouTube's filters by optimizing their titles with popular search terms — “learn colors” and Frozen’s Elsa, for example.
Many of these video channels had millions of subscribers and millions of views, according to writer James Bridle who wrote about it extensively in a Medium blog post in early November.
How long has this been going on?
BuzzFeed News reported that YouTube has been aware of this trend for some time.
YouTube began pulling ads from 3 million of these videos as early as June, BuzzFeed reported. By removing the ads, YouTube discourages people from uploading such content because they cannot make money from it.
Additionally, an activist told BuzzFeed that it had contacted the company multiple times to complain about the videos in September, but that “no substantive action was taken.” YouTube told BuzzFeed that it had removed offending videos that the activist had mentioned in his emails.
Charlie Warzel, the BuzzFeed News reporter who covered the story, said the question remains: How long did YouTube allow this to continue before it finally began its crackdown this month?
What was the response from the public and brands?
Reports of the disturbing trend prompted some brands to pause advertising on YouTube this past weekend, The Wall Street Journal reported. It’s unclear when those ads would resume.
Criticism for YouTube, and the parent company that owns Google, also ramped up as a result of the reporting done by BuzzFeed News and Bridle’s blog post.
What has YouTube said and done in response?
A spokesman for the company told The Journal that it was “working urgently to fix this” after major brands paused their advertising around some of the biggest holiday shopping days of the year — Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
YouTube also says it is expanding its efforts to remove videos showing minors “that may be endangering a child,” and says it will be putting to use machine-learning technology and automated tools to crack down on such content. It is also cracking down on disturbing or offensive comments posted on videos showing children.
In addition, YouTube said it was investigating how its search bar prompted users to query “how to have s*x with your kids” on the video site, the BBC reported.
Share your thoughts on this evolving story: Are you confident YouTube is doing enough to crack down on disturbing content involving children? Have you personally seen some of this content? If you have kids, are you concerned they will find this content or other disturbing content on YouTube?
Have some thoughts to share?
Join me in a conversation: Shoot me a private email with your thoughts or ideas on a different approach to this story. As always, you can also send us a tweet.
Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com
Twitter: @RunGomez
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Em uma declaração à , o site de vídeos  diz que removeu mais de 150.000 vídeos envolvendo  de sua própria plataforma. Além disso, 270 contas foram encerradas. Em 625 mil vídeos, a função de comentário foi desligada. De mais 2 milhões de vídeos e 50.000 canais, os anúncios foram removidos.

Os vídeos excluídos, que foram criados ostensivamente por adultos, e que visavam principalmente uma audiência juvenil, mostraram que as crianças eram exploradas em situações abusivas, como alimentação forçada e tirando as roupas. Um canal apresentou vídeo na qual uma criança foi vista sendo empurrada para a máquina de lavar. Os vídeos obtiveram milhões de visualizações e atraíram comentários pedófilos. O escândalo tornou-se publicamente conhecido na semana passada, quando alguns milhares de vídeos, principalmente da , foram descobertos e divulgados pela . Como resultado do escândalo, o  tornou-se sujeito a críticas generalizadas e pesadas. Algumas empresas de renome fizeram uma pausa em seus anúncios no site, como ,  e .

"Finalmente, na semana passada, removemos anúncios de quase 2 milhões de vídeos e mais de 50 mil canais mascarados como conteúdo familiar. O conteúdo que coloca em perigo as crianças é abominável e inaceitável para nós", diz a empresa. Em uma postagem no blog, reconheceu na semana passada a crescente presença em seu site desse tipo de conteúdo aparentemente familiar.