YouTube can be an extremely dangerous place for small children who are lured by pedophiles in videos and comments, and in recent days the Internet giant has also found itself in the middle of a big scandal because of this. So shocked users discovered that the auto-completion of the query also offered pedophile phrases, which YouTube has since removed.
In the past few days, YouTube also announced that they removed more than 270 profiles and 150.000 videos from their platform and turned off commenting on more than 625.000 videos that are targeted by predators who stalk small children. This is why some big advertisers "froze" advertising on YouTube when they discovered that their ads were being shown next to controversial videos. YouTube also told Vice that it has removed ads from two million videos and 50.000 channels pretending to be family content.
While YouTube struggles with the amount of content uploaded every minute (400 hours), you as a parent can take a number of actions to make sure your child doesn't just stumble upon content they shouldn't be seeing.
Filters
By clicking on your icon in the upper right corner, enter the YouTube settings and turn on the restricted mode. For some, it may be right at the bottom of the list when you click on your icon. Google says it hides potentially inappropriate videos flagged by other users or flagged in other ways. However, they also note that it is not 100 percent accurate, so disputed content can slip through.
Turn off recommended content
Google wants to keep you with YouTube as much as possible and offers you recommendations after each watched video, but even through these recommendations it is possible to slip through controversial content, and although there is no official way except to remove individual videos, there are various extensions for Chrome and Firefox.
Ad blocking
While watching cartoons and videos on YouTube, children are bombarded with advertisements, and Ad Block and similar ad-blocking tools will provide them with a more peaceful environment.
You decide what is required
This is an option that depends on you. Children with various queries on YouTube can suddenly end up in a total of XNUMX places that will lead them to questionable content. If you will be the one in charge of what is entered into the search field, you will have direct control over what is viewed.
Create lists
This is also a great way to have control over what content is being viewed. Below each video, the penultimate icon (Add to) will allow you to add it to a playlist. You can name each list by the content it contains, and you can easily moderate different lists to ensure they offer verified content.
YouTube kids and alternative applications
YouTube kids is YouTube's application for children that only offers content suitable for little ones, and profiles can be created here and content will be shown according to their age. Questionable content can also be slipped here, but the browser can be turned off and only a limited amount of content can be accessed. Children's channels such as Nickelodeon, Disney, Cartoon Network offer their own apps with customized content, reports USA Today.
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