YouTube has considered censoring all videos on YouTube Kids

YouTube's 2019 was much worse after a series of scandals involving videos specifically for children.

In 2019, YouTube had to pay the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) a fine of up to $ 170 million - a staggering amount with the bottomless pockets of the Google search giant. However, allegations related to a violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act will always be a stain that is hard to clean up for its reputation. In fact, the situation for YouTube was so bad that last year, the online video platform had to consider censoring each video individually among all videos uploaded to YouTube Kids.

Specifically, according to Bloomberg, YouTube is said to have formed a group of 40 employees, alias Crosswalk, referring to the dangerous content appearing on the website. One of the goals of this group is to censor all videos for children ages 8 and under to ensure that no inappropriate content is left out. For example, last year, reporters discovered a series of "sniffy" videos on the theme of suicide and violence, hiding under the labels of popular cartoon characters like children Mickey and Peppa. Pig.

This censorship plan was resolutely implemented by YouTube, so much so that they prepared a press release. However, at the last minute, CEO Susan Wojcicki canceled the plan. It seems that such a strict censorship plan will turn this website into a media company, thereby forcing them to bear the kind of responsibilities that news companies face in relation to copyright, threats, aggressive statements, and many other things.

YouTube has considered censoring all videos on YouTube Kids Picture 1

A content not suitable for children, hiding behind the images of Elsa and Spider-Man characters

Earlier this year, YouTube vowed to take stronger action on children's content, and began by turning off comments in tens of millions of clips. The company has sought to reduce the number of views of policy violating videos by 80%, while increasing the views of videos from "reputable news agencies" to 60%.

However, the company did not offer any other significant solutions. Wojcicki recently said, " if we are held responsible for each content we propose, we will have to evaluate them." The company also almost "give up", unable to censor the amount of content with the huge scale they are. Currently, users upload over 500 hours of video to the platform every minute. " YouTube is too poorly prepared to face such big challenges," said a former YouTube marketing manager.

Reference: Engadget