YouTube is reportedly disabling comments on all the videos featuring kids following a controversy over predatory comments being posted on videos of children.
YouTube will temporarily remove comments from videos that feature minors in the coming months. Only a select few channels with children will be allowed to include a comment sections, but even that comes with a caveat: they’ll be required to monitor their comments for safety.
“These channels will be required to actively moderate their comments, beyond just using our moderation tools, and demonstrate a low risk of predatory behavior,” YouTube wrote in a blog post.
YouTube also said that it has launched a better algorithm to let it automatically identify and remove predatory comments. The classifier is more sweeping in scope, according to the blog post, and will catch up to twice as many predatory comments from individuals.
YouTube took the decision after major companies like Disney, Nestlé, AT&T and others started to pull up their ads after discovering that their ads were playing on videos that had predatory comments on them.
As part of an initial response, YouTube said last week that it had deleted tens of millions of comments and removed more than 400 channels associated with writing predatory comments on videos staring minors.
YouTube has also clear up the confusion regarding how changes will effect creators ability to run ads In its blog post, YouTube says none of this will affect creators monetization.
A YouTube spokesperson said that although the company understands comment sections are important to creators as way of measuring engagement, we also know that this is the right thing to do to protect the YouTube community.
