YouTube has a pedophile problem on its hands
YouTube has a perv problem.
The streaming-video giant has seen a slew of big brands — including Adidas, Deutsche Bank, Amazon and Oreo maker Mondelez — yank ads after a UK newspaper revealed on Friday they got paired with videos of scantily clad children that attracted disgusting comments from pedophiles.
Creeps have been flocking to YouTube videos of young girls in their underwear lazing in bed, doing splits and playing with each other. Many of the segments are uploaded by the kids themselves, with sick viewers asking them to remove their clothes and perform sex acts in future videos.
In its investigation, the Times of London said YouTube, a unit of Alphabet’s Inc. Google, had allowed sexualized imagery of children to be easily searchable, and that it hadn’t lived up to promises to better police its site to protect children.
In some cases, creeps were able to bypass YouTube’s filters by entering their searches in Russian, which brought up videos of Slavic children.
“There shouldn’t be any ads running on this content, and we are working urgently to fix this,” a YouTube spokesman said.
The site doesn’t plan to curb minors from posting videos, but aims to clamp down on pervs’ ability to seek out and post comments on them.
German discount retailer Lidl, Diageo, the distiller of Smirnoff vodka and Johnnie Walker scotch, and chocolate maker Mars all confirmed they had pulled advertising campaigns from YouTube.
“We are shocked and appalled to see that our adverts have appeared alongside such exploitative and inappropriate content,“ Mars said in a statement.
“We have taken the decision to immediately suspend all our online advertising on YouTube and Google globally… Until we have confidence that appropriate safeguards are in place, we will not advertise on YouTube and Google.”
The Times reported that YouTube does not proactively check for inappropriate images of children but instead relies on software algorithms, external nongovernment organizations and police forces to flag such content.
In March, corporate titans including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Walmart and Dish pulled their YouTube ads over concerns they might get paired with offensive videos.
YouTube parent Google — which makes tens of billions of dollars each year from ad sales — found itself in hot water with advertisers over YouTube videos by radical Muslim preacher Wagdy Ghoneim, white nationalist David Duke and terrorist support groups.
Earlier this week, YouTube said it was working on a fix after it was discovered that YouTube’s algorithm was getting fooled into recommending disturbing kids videos.
In one example, YouTube algorithms may have recommended that children who watched videos with the popular cartoon character Peppa Pig watch another video where Peppa Pig chugs bleach.