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Youtube Businesses Google Technology

Brands Pull YouTube Ads Over Images of Children (reuters.com) 125

Posted by msmash from the your-time-has-come dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Lidl, Cadbury maker Mondelez, Mars and other companies have pulled advertising from YouTube after the Times newspaper found the video sharing site was showing clips of scantily clad children alongside the ads of major brands. Comments from hundreds of pedophiles were posted alongside the videos, which appeared to have been uploaded by the children themselves, according to a Times investigation. One clip of a pre-teenage girl in a nightie drew 6.5 million views. The paper said YouTube, a unit of Alphabet subsidiary Google, had allowed sexualized imagery of children to be easily searchable and not lived up to promises to better monitor and police its services to protect children. In response, a YouTube spokesman said: "There shouldn't be any ads running on this content and we are working urgently to fix this."
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Brands Pull YouTube Ads Over Images of Children More

Brands Pull YouTube Ads Over Images of Children

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  • There shouldn't be any ads on this content? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 24, 2017 @09:09AM (#55614887)

    So it is confirmed that the content is not a problem? Interesting policies youtube.

    • Re:There shouldn't be any ads on this content? (Score:4, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday November 24, 2017 @09:15AM (#55614923) Homepage Journal

      In the UK (where The Times is) this material could be illegal for some people. The law states that for something to be child porn it doesn't necessarily have to contain nudity or be suggestive, only likely to stimulate the viewer. So children's clothes catalogues in a parent's hands are fine, but under some single guy's mattress could be child porn.

      Yes, it's that crazy.

      • Re:There shouldn't be any ads on this content? (Score:5, Informative)

        by ColdWetDog ( 752185 ) on Friday November 24, 2017 @09:22AM (#55614955) Homepage

        Intent (mens rea) [wikipedia.org] is always an issue in crime.

        But yes, in reality it gets to be pretty bizarre.

        • Whose intent, though?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gnick ( 1211984 )

            Presumably anyone whose intent they can 'prove'; creator, distributor, or consumer. I can't think of a fair way of establishing intent that doesn't involve somebody declaring it themselves.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

              How can it be the consumer? Being excited thinking about children in private is would be thought crime, literally. So what can the consumer be accused of? Intent of having dirty thoughts?
              Possible for the distributor, for example if the editor of a children catalog decide to put them in sex shops.
              Possible for the creator. This is the most serious case because he is the only one dealing with actual children.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by gnick ( 1211984 )

                So what can the consumer be accused of? Intent of having dirty thoughts?

                Pretty much. Like AmiMoJo points out above, in the UK the same catalog could be legal for the person buying his daughter a bathing suit, but illegal for the guy spanking to it.

              • That's right - welcome to the 1980s citizen.

                We have hate crime laws too, where the criteria for any allegation to be a hate crime is that someone feels it is offensive.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Intent (mens rea) is always an issue in crime.

          Except when there is strict liability [wikipedia.org], which can be even crazier:

          For example, in Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain v Storkwain (1986) 2 ALL ER 635, a pharmacist supplied drugs to a patient who presented a forged doctor's prescription, but was convicted even though the House of Lords accepted that the pharmacist was blameless.

        • Mens rea is not always an issue [wikipedia.org] in crime actually.

        • Intent (mens rea) [wikipedia.org] is always an issue in crime.

          But yes, in reality it gets to be pretty bizarre.

          Standing in line at the water park I'd taken my son to, a 13 year old girl starting chatting indicating she was fairly loose.

          Figure I gave her my number as coming home from work one day a message on the answering machine was from her, she said she was looking for some fun by could get by with just eating her girlfriends junk. No return number given, and the last contact I had with them.

          Now who's intent, and who would of burned.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by pnutjam ( 523990 )
            The adult is the problem. Don't give your number to 13 year olds and don't prey on them when they are vulnerable.

            What's hard to understand?

        • Intent (mens rea) [wikipedia.org] is always an issue in crime.

          But yes, in reality it gets to be pretty bizarre.

          But intent is typically a defense against a charge when you've done something that would otherwise be illegal. It's pretty scary when legal activity becomes illegal because of intent. If an advertising flyer is included in every newspaper and it contains ads for children's underwear, could a single guy be charged for failing to throw it in the garbage fast enough? This sounds very scary.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

        In the UK (where The Times is) this material could be illegal for some people. The law states that for something to be child porn it doesn't necessarily have to contain nudity or be suggestive, only likely to stimulate the viewer. So children's clothes catalogues in a parent's hands are fine, but under some single guy's mattress could be child porn.

        Yes, it's that crazy.

        Some times I wonder if the old projection issue might be showing up, in similar manner to how anti-gay family values politicians have a striking tendency to be found doing exactly what they rail against at other times.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by Hal_Porter ( 817932 )

      They were too busy hunting down dangerous people like StyxHexenHammer666 who got his whole channel shut down for violating community guidelines.

      StyxHexenHammer666 Has Been Terminated [youtube.com]

      What were the last videos he uploaded?

      Google to Derank RT and Sputnik to Protect Users from Wrongthink [youtube.com]

      Democrat Meltdown Continues as Clinton and Obama Camps Begin to Attack One Another [youtube.com]

      Vermont Issues 127: Someone Destroyed 300 Gallons of Maple Syrup During a Robbery [youtube.com]

      I.e. criticize Google who own Youtube or the Democrats (a href="

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Hal_Porter ( 817932 )

        I screwed up that link about the Democrats getting a remarkable 98% of Google's employees donations compared the tech industry average of 53%

        http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/1... [cnn.com]

        NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Google Inc. employees took out their wallets and showed overwhelming support for the Democratic Party last year, according to a report Monday in USA Today.

        A USA Today campaign finance analysis found that, of the company's overall political contributions, 98 percent went to Democrats, the biggest share among top tech donors.

        The online search company's employees gave $207,650 to federal candidates during last year's election campaign, which includes the White House race between Democrat John Kerry and the winning incumbent Republican, President Bush. The contributions were up from just $250 in 2000 when Google was a start-up, according to the paper.

        The paper said that 53 percent of the broader tech industry's $25.9 million went to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign finance.

    • Re:There shouldn't be any ads on this content? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Computershack ( 1143409 ) on Friday November 24, 2017 @11:56AM (#55615633)

      So it is confirmed that the content is not a problem? Interesting policies youtube.

      I think it is more of an indictment of yourself that you think a young kid being in a night gown is anything other than a young kid being in a night gown. I doubt it was a negligee or other lingerie, probably just a young girl in a my little pony nightie. If you find the possibility of that being sexually attractive then you have issues. Or are you one of the brigade that think every man is a closet paedophile?

      • That's what always makes me uncomfortable about censorship - especially this particular kind. Somebody says, "this was inappropriate content, we've removed it from your sight because it's inappropriate and you shouldn't be looking at it." Of course, since I can't look at it to judge for myself what they consider "inappropriate", I'll never know if they were right or wrong - or what else they might be censoring.

  • People are sick assholes ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 24, 2017 @09:13AM (#55614913)

    Automated algorithms really just highlight that fact.

    How else does Faccebook end up selling ads for the term "Jew Hater"?

    And then tech companies just say "oh noes, it wasn't us, it was teh algorithm which did the naughty". Sorry, you built it, you own it, you profit it, you're legally responsible for it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      The term is strictly halal, that's how. /s

  • Starts witchhunt against superior competitor it cannot compete anymore.

    This is news? For real?

  • Biting back (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Google's plan to advertise anything, anywhere, anytime is backfiring.

  • They're too busy demonetizing second amendment channels to realize that their kiddie porn industry is blooming.

    https://youtu.be/H0Atpwo_AuY [youtu.be]

  • As a father I find the reaction disturbing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Friday November 24, 2017 @10:32AM (#55615235)
    I have five kids. I don't want my young daughters thinking their bodies are sex objects. I don't want them worrying about always covering up. I can't control what other people think and I don't think it matters what thoughts other people have in their heads. What I do care about is what other people say or do. So if my daughters upload something where they are having fun and they happen to also be in pajamas or their bathing suits I don't want someone saying they are being pornographic and shouldn't post it. I don't want my daughters actions or activities to be restricted because some people are worried about what other people are thinking. That's just messed up.
    • Do you want people commenting about the things they would like to do to them on youtube? Because if not, you might actually be for the censorship in this case.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Wouldn't it be great if YouTube allowed you to disable comments? /s

        • But what if there is ever way to comment besides directly on youtube! /herp-derp

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            You're worried about what people are saying about your kids on other sites that you have never heard of and will never be exposed to? Where does that madness end? Do you also keep them locked up at home because there might be perverts at the grocery store?

            Out of sight, out of mind. You should worry less about what people might be privately thinking.

            • FTS: Comments from hundreds of pedophiles were posted alongside the videos, which appeared to have been uploaded by the children themselves,
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by phorm ( 591458 )

      I think that - in part - the reaction is in regards to the comments from a bunch of sickos/pedos as opposed to the kids posting themselves. That said, one *should* learn at a younger age to be careful of what you post online, as in the age of data-retention and mining it could have repercussions later in life.

      Maybe one way to deal with it would be to restrict comments on videos posted by young persons.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pots ( 5047349 )
      Someone made a reasonable claim a while back that we can blame the hysteria over pedophiles that has been building for the last few decades on Rupert Murdoch. This is an apolitical criticism: he gets a lot of crap for his politics, and for the politics of the media outlets that he owns, but apparently this was just about making money. People buy newspapers and watch the news more when they're scared, and scaring people about their children turns out to be very effective.

      Also, responding to the article: No
  • This allergic reaction gives incentive to murder children who have already been abused, since the sentences are about the same but the murder makes the pedo less likely to be caught. It keeps pedophiles from seeking help before they abuse, since no psychiatrist can be trusted. It encourages further degradation of the constitution, as any abuse is considered acceptable to stop a pedophile. It constitutes a de-facto thought crime. It encourages shortcuts in logic. It prevents scientific arguments about how to
  • There's a lot of fucking assholes in this country, and I bet most of them voted for Trump if they weren't already felons.
  • from media looking to stir up controversy. The advertisers need Youtube more than Youtube needs them. But unfortunately Google themselves sympathize with censorship and pearlclutching so they go along with it.

  • And here we go again... (Score:3)

    by Z80a ( 971949 ) on Friday November 24, 2017 @09:53PM (#55618381)

    Old media trying to murder new media .

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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