YouTube Deletes 150,000 Videos, Disables 625,000 Clips Over Predatory Comments

YouTube’s PR crisis over child safety on the internet-video site has become a business issue — with several large advertisers pulling ads after the trend of sex predators commenting on kid videos came to light.

YouTube is taking extensive action after word broke that pedophiles were targeting videos of children with vile comments. YouTube is said to be responding by so far having disabled comments on 625,000 clips and closed accounts.

The streaming service reported that it had taken down over 150,000 videos that had fallen prey to comment abuse, and had disabled comments for more than 625,000 clips. It also terminated the accounts of several hundred users behind those comments.

YouTube has said it’s stepped up enforcement of policies to block, restrict or demonetize videos featuring kid-oriented themes and characters but that include violent, sexual or otherwise inappropriate themes. YouTube said it recently terminated more than 50 channels, including the popular Toy Freaks channel, and removed thousands of videos that violated its policies for child-friendly content.

The move comes just days after YouTube cracked down on child-exploiting videos, and just as it had to pull disturbing autocomplete results. It has been promising stricter enforcement of its policies on both the content of videos and their comments.

As with YouTube’s reaction to hate videos, the takedowns and policy enforcement measures are welcome, but also relatively late — they’re coming as advertisers are pulling out and the damage has already been done. The tougher enforcement should reduce the chances of a situation like this going forward, but the rash of discoveries suggests that there may need to be more proactive campaigns that catch abuse before it makes headlines.