YouTube vowed to get rid of graphic bestiality images from its platform almost a year ago. However, various queries still return a number of videos with thumbnails signifying erotic act between women and animals. Although these videos do not contain such acts to an obvious degree, they are pretty suggestive.
What’s even worse is that many of these videos manage to get a ton of views. One particular instance that needs to be highlighted here concerns a video with an overly suggestive “horse and girl” thumbnail, as noted by Buzzfeed. That video raked up over 11 million views. The Channel on which that video was uploaded is named after a children’s meme and has a number of kid-oriented videos.
Last April, some media outlets flagged countless bestiality-based videos to YouTube and as expected, the company removed those videos right away and issued a statement which read,
"We have strict policies against misleading thumbnails, and violative content flagged to us has been removed. We're... [also] developing better tools for detecting inappropriate and misleading metadata and thumbnails so we can take fast action against them."
It has been found out that many of these videos aren’t monetized when they are uploaded. It’s only when they get a whopping view count before they turn on monetization.
The fact that the bestiality thumb issue still exists suggests that YouTube is having a hard time finding a permanent solution to get rid of this problem. Moreover, in December 2017, a BuzzFeed News report exposed a faulty content moderation process with confusing strategies and conflicting guidelines. They were informed by a number of YouTube employees who worked as moderators, that the guidelines they received demanded them to simply ignore the content and promote “high quality” videos with solid production.
Shortly after that, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki claimed to get rid of this problem and issued a statement which read,
“I’ve seen how some bad actors are exploiting our openness to mislead, manipulate, harass or even harm.", she added further, "Our goal is to stay one step ahead of bad actors, making it harder for policy-violating content to surface or remain on YouTube.”
She also claimed to increase the number of human moderators to more than 10,000 by 2018 for that purpose.
Featured Photo: JEKATERINA NIKITINA/GETTY
What’s even worse is that many of these videos manage to get a ton of views. One particular instance that needs to be highlighted here concerns a video with an overly suggestive “horse and girl” thumbnail, as noted by Buzzfeed. That video raked up over 11 million views. The Channel on which that video was uploaded is named after a children’s meme and has a number of kid-oriented videos.
Last April, some media outlets flagged countless bestiality-based videos to YouTube and as expected, the company removed those videos right away and issued a statement which read,
"We have strict policies against misleading thumbnails, and violative content flagged to us has been removed. We're... [also] developing better tools for detecting inappropriate and misleading metadata and thumbnails so we can take fast action against them."
It has been found out that many of these videos aren’t monetized when they are uploaded. It’s only when they get a whopping view count before they turn on monetization.
The fact that the bestiality thumb issue still exists suggests that YouTube is having a hard time finding a permanent solution to get rid of this problem. Moreover, in December 2017, a BuzzFeed News report exposed a faulty content moderation process with confusing strategies and conflicting guidelines. They were informed by a number of YouTube employees who worked as moderators, that the guidelines they received demanded them to simply ignore the content and promote “high quality” videos with solid production.
Shortly after that, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki claimed to get rid of this problem and issued a statement which read,
“I’ve seen how some bad actors are exploiting our openness to mislead, manipulate, harass or even harm.", she added further, "Our goal is to stay one step ahead of bad actors, making it harder for policy-violating content to surface or remain on YouTube.”
She also claimed to increase the number of human moderators to more than 10,000 by 2018 for that purpose.
Featured Photo: JEKATERINA NIKITINA/GETTY
