Dangerous Contents Can Be Found On YouTube Kids

There were several disturbing contents slipping through YouTube’s filter for instance: contents that instruct viewers to harm themselves can be found in videos for children’s video on YouTube Kids and YouTube. This was discovered by a safety authority for children when they're online.

According to a report made by Free N. Hess – a mother and paediatrician – stated that an undisclosed mother found a horrifying event while watching a YouTube Kids’ content. While they were watching the video, a man wearing sunglasses interrupted the video and showed children how to inflict self-harm.

Using a sharp knife around his arm, the man said, “Kids, remember, cut this way for attention, and this way for results,” and then he disappeared on the screen. The following content was as normal.

In her report, she accused that the video was planted intentionally into children’s content on YouTube Kids, specifically to harm children. Whoever did that might have to wait for the parents to let their guard down and make his entrance into the disturbing video.

It has been a week since Hess first report of the problem, and the disturbing footage was found itself in another children’s video, on YouTube’s main site. The matter became worse when Hess noticed that people had been reporting the problem approximately 8 months back, and the video was still there. Eventually, the video has recently been deleted, according to Hess.

A spokesperson for YouTube – Andrea Faville – stated that YouTube is currently working to ensure its platform won’t be used as a place to encourage such a dangerous act. YouTube will have more strict policies that ban videos promoting self-harm.

YouTube further stated that the video sharing platform would rely on both their smart detection technology and user flagging to flag such content. They also said that they have removed millions of videos and channels that produced violating content every quarter before they can have any views or subscribers. YouTube’s main objectives have been to improve their systems and quickly deal with violating content, which is why they report their progress every quarter and provide users with a dashboard illustrating the status of videos those users have flagged.