YouTube to take stricter action against inappropriate children’s videos

YouTube has further tightened its policy on children’s videos, removing from its website videos directed at children but containing violence or sex. When videos are not aimed at children, they are subject to an age restriction.

On a recently posted support page, Google explains how it is changing its policy on children’s videos on YouTube, including stricter moderation on inappropriate content for children. Rather than age-restricting videos featuring violence, sex, or other inappropriate content for children, such videos will be removed if they clearly target children. This is possible, for example, because tags are attached to the video that indicate that it is a children’s video, or if this is shown in the description.

Google calls this deception, and will therefore remove the videos from now on, in order to reduce the chance that children come into contact with inappropriate content. Anyone who makes such videos without indicating that it is a children’s video, or clearly indicating that adults are the audience, will only be subject to an age restriction. Google urges creators to follow guidelines when creating children’s videos to avoid video removal.

YouTube has been working on making the website more kid-friendly for some time now. For example, it recently released YouTube Kids and removed a large number of inappropriate children’s videos. A recently adapted algorithm should also ensure that child-friendly videos become more visible.