Child Exploitation On YouTube Videos, Companies Pause Advertising, Critics Outrage

Once again, YouTube is under fire for letting child exploitation contents floating around its platform.

The disturbing matter

On Sunday, blogger Matt Watson posted a video to show how pedophiles are using YouTube comments to identify video parts where children are in sexually implicit or compromising positions.

In the comment section, users post time stamps that link to similar videos. In addition, Watson described how YouTube’s algorithm would suggest similar videos when users had got into the wormhole.

Companies’ actions

On Thursday, AT&T pulled its advertising from YouTube after a blogger showed that a “soft-core pedophelia ring” is taking advantage of comments on the platform to spread child exploitation videos. AT&T’s action follows Nestle, Disney, and Epic Games’ moves on Wednesday, according to a Bloomberg report.

A representative of AT&T stated that they will remove all advertising from the platform until Google can secure them from any vulgar content.

According to the report, YouTube plays advertisements for Nestle, Disney, and Epic Games before some of these videos.

As per Nestle, its representative stated that very few of Nestle ads appeared on videos with inappropriate comments and it will reconsider its pause of advertising on YouTube based on Google’s current measures.

Meanwhile, Epic Games’ representative confirmed its pause of advertising on the platform:

Disney didn’t respond to a comment request immediately while Watson didn’t reply to a message on Twitter.

YouTube’s moves

A YouTube representative said that the platform has removed channels and accounts, comments which evade its policies, as well as reported some of the occurrences to authorities. The representative added that they have policies that clearly prohibit this on the platform. A YouTube spokeswoman informed that advertisements on the videos referred to cost around $8,000 within the past 60 days.

The company took down tens of videos and banned over 400 accounts that pose risks of child exploitation.

The storm of criticism

Critics say they have had enough with this problem on YouTube. For instance, a couple of years ago, the company faced a backlash when its filters failed to prevent disturbing videos from getting into YouTube Kids.

Haley Halverson, National Center on Sexual Exploitation VP of advocacy and outreach, said:

Despite YouTube’s actions, child advocacy groups complain that it’s not working fast enough to address the issue.