YouTube Is Finally Doing Something About These Highly Disturbing Videos Deceptively Directed at Kids

After several recent and very unsettling reports in the New York Times and Medium, detailing the unsettling trend of sneakily violent, sexual, or generally disturbing videos aimed at children appearing on YouTube Kids, YouTube has taken steps to do something about it.

The Times report this week talked about “startling” videos featuring familiar characters from popular children’s videos engaging in violent scenarios and carrying out disturbing tasks like drinking bleach or going to a strip club. The videos, featuring the likes of the PAW Patrol or Peppa Pig, are creepy and strange would very likely be disturbing or even traumatizing to kids who watch them.

YouTube’s response, per the Verge, is to put age restrictions on any content that gets flagged:

“We’re in the process of implementing a new policy that age restricts this content in the YouTube main app when flagged,” said Juniper Downs, YouTube’s director of policy. “Age-restricted content is automatically not allowed in YouTube Kids.” YouTube says that it’s been formulating this new policy for a while, and that it’s not rolling it out in direct response to the recent coverage.

The post that journalist James Bridle wrote on Medium, which went viral this week, was an eye-opening and frequently unsettling look at the vast universe of mass-produced children’s videos on the YouTube Kids channel. Because both the content on YouTube Kids and the process for weeding out inappropriate content are based on algorithms and keywords, there’s a way to game both of those systems in order to ingratiate questionable, inappropriate, or even straight-up harmful content into YouTube Kids.

The videos profiled in the post ranged from mildly unnerving (putting the wrong heads from familiar Disney characters on the wrong bodies) to outright violence between familiar superhero and animated characters. There are also even more insidious videos which appear to be coaxing children into harmful behavior. This infamous video of the popular animated children’s character Peppa Pig and friends drinking bleach pretty much speaks for itself:

Age-restricted videos are barred from appearing on YouTube Kids, and other flagged videos will be reviewed. Per the Verge: “YouTube says it has thousands of people working around the clock in different time zones to review flagged content. If the review finds the video is in violation of the new policy, it will be age restricted, automatically blocking it from showing up in the Kids app.”

Still, despite these new steps taken, YouTube Kids still places the onus on users/parents. Per Variety: “Our systems work hard to filter out more mature content from the app. But no system is perfect,” Balaji Srinivasan, YouTube Kids engineering director, wrote in a blog post last week. “If you find a video that you think should not be in the app, you can block it and flag it for review.”