YouTube terminates hundreds of accounts in response to major pedophile scandal
TechCrunch / Video BlocksYouTube have finally given a response to their site-wide pedophile problem, which was uncovered by YouTuber ‘MattsWhatItIs’ in a chilling video on February 17.
While YouTube has suffered from dangerous and pedophilic content for some time, the site has since given a decisive response to this recent exposure of apparent predatory culture across the platform.
YouTube addressed the issue in reply to YouTuber Philip DeFranco’s video on the subject, where they claimed that they have terminated over 400 problematic channels – and even reported certain commenters to the authorities.
“In the last 48 hours… we’ve disabled comments on on tens of millions of videos,” YouTube stated. “We’ve also terminated over 400 channels for the comments they’ve left on videos, and reported illegal comments to law enforcement.”
YouTuber Matt ‘MattsWhatItIs’ Watson uncovered the issue during a video in mid February, where he noted that he was able to find suggestive videos of young girls within five clicks on the site.
That’s not all; Watson also found himself in what he called a ‘wormhole’ of problematic content, which featured a plethora of disturbing comments targeting underage girls featured in the videos.
Since Wattson’s video went live, a number of notable companies have halted their ads on the platform altogether, after being made aware that their ads were being featured on such videos.
Thank you for reaching out, Kassie. IKEA US uses brand safety technology on all of our digital ads to make sure they don’t run in unsafe environments. We’re looking into this with YouTube to ensure these measures are working properly.
— IKEA USA Help (@IKEAUSAHelp) February 19, 2019
Such companies include the likes of Swedish furniture company IKEA, spell-checking service Grammarly, and even Fortnite developers Epic Games, among others.
Wattson’s video has garnered over two million views as of February 21.