YouTube is a facilitator of child sexual exploitation by allowing a softcore pedophilia ring to flourish on their site. YouTube has consistently failed to take full responsibility for the cleaning up of this issue, often putting forward lackluster solutions. Spread the message that it’s time to #WakeUpYouTube.
Advertisers like Walt Disney Co., Nestle, Fortnite, and AT&T have reportedly suspended advertising with YouTube over mounting concerns about the platform being used for the eroticization of children and for pedophile networking. Two days after Google claimed to be finally fixing this problem, The National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s Haley Halverson researched claims of pedophile rings, child erotica, and child exploitation on YouTube and found alarming results confirming the original reports and continued use of the platform for exploitive purposes.
This, among other pornographic and sexually violent content all over YouTube, is why we are also demanding that YouTube turn on default “SafeSearch” for all YouTube users.
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“Within two clicks, I was able to enter into a rabbit hole of videos where children are being eroticized by pedophiles and child abusers,” said Haley Halverson, Vice President of Advocacy and Outreach at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “The content became more flagrantly sexualized the more I clicked, as the YouTube recommendation algorithm fed me more and more videos with hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of views.”
“Despite YouTube’s claims to be cleaning up this content, YouTube so far still continues to monetize videos that eroticize young children and that serve as hubs for pedophiles to network and trade information and links to more graphic child pornography. I saw ads for LinkedIn, O’Reilly Autoparts, Google CS First, Promo, and even a YouTube ad survey.”
“Further, YouTube is blocking the comments on many of these videos because the algorithms recognize predatory comments are proliferating, yet they leave the video up to gain hundreds of thousands of additional views, and sometimes even continue to monetize these videos after turning off the comments. Some of these videos also contain flags for potential sex traffickers or child sexual abusers trying to get in contact with the children in the videos via social media, in addition to pedophiles networking amongst themselves to trade more extreme child sexual abuse images—i.e. child pornography. YouTube is putting these children at risk by not removing these videos,” Halverson continued.
Tweet at YouTube asking them to clean up their platform. Also, send a tweet thanking companies who have pulled their advertisements.
.@YouTube Remove all sexually exploitative content from your platform! The child erotica you have long known about and monetized is only a drop in the bucket. Your site should be default have filters on! #WakeUpYouTube Share on X .@Loreal @Maybelline @LinkedIn @oreillyauto Ads for your products have appeared on @YouTube videos that sexually exploit young children. Will you remove your ads like other companies have? #WakeUpYouTube Share on X Thank you @Disney @Nestle @EpicGames @ForniteGame @ATT for helping to move @Google to clean child sexual exploitation off their platform. @YouTube #WakeUpYoutube Share on XJoin nearly 3,000 people who have signed the petition for YouTube to remove graphic content:
