For some time, Youtube has been careful against minors using the platform. They’ve invested in a number of services towards this cause, like the CSAI Match Technology.
Youtube Kids was released in 2015 so that users below the age of 13 could also safely browse through the contents of the platform, all the while giving the parents much more control.
Responsibility is our number one priority, and chief among our areas of focus is protecting minors and families. We also enforce a strong set of policies to protect minors on our platform, including those that prohibit exploiting minors, encouraging dangerous or inappropriate behaviors, and aggregating videos of minors in potentially exploitative ways – From YouTube’s recent blogpost.
In a latest effort to protect minors, Youtube has restricted streaming services for young minors, to only those who have an adult in the stream.
Channels not in compliance with this policy may lose their ability to live stream. A few new classifiers have been added to the list of service . They will detect and remove the videos that do not follow the new live streaming policy of Youtube. Classifiers are machine learning tools that help identify specific types of content.
Additionally, to further protect minors against exploitation, Youtube will disable comments on the videos that feature minors. They have even added classifiers that help delete twice the number of violative comments than before. This will definitely upset a lot of content creators using the platform. But Youtube has stated that this is the best way to keep the young audience safe, which is their top priority.
Youtube has always restricted recommendations of content that comes close to violating the Community Guidelines but don’t actually violate them. To the list of such videos, they have now added the videos that feature minors. So now, Youtube will restrict such videos from showing up on recommendations.
Young Streamers will have the face most of the problem. Many of them will probably have to drop their channels just because they need an adult while they stream.
For more information, read the complete blogpost by YouTube here.
