YouTube is cracking down on age-related regulations for its users.
The video platform, owned by Google, announced Monday that it is banning “younger minors” from live streaming “unless they are clearly accompanied by an adult,” according to a blog post.
The new policy was announced on the heels of a New York Times report published Monday, in which researchers discovered that YouTube automatically suggested “videos of prepubescent, partially clothed children” often to users who had already engaged with “sexually themed content.”
Though YouTube acknowledged the “recent news reports,” the site maintained that “the vast majority of videos featuring minors on YouTube … do not violate our polices and are innocently posted.”
Even so, the company referred to the new ban along with additional recent updates made to further ensure the safety of minors.
Though the site is known for allowing users to comment on videos, YouTube cited its initiative to ban comments “on videos featuring minors,” which followed reports by Wired and other outlets in February. Wired noted that pedophiles were commenting on such videos to highlight moments wherein a child’s genitals were shown.
Though “the content itself does not violate our polices, we recognize the minors could be at risk of online or offline exploitation,” YouTube said Monday of its recent “efforts … around limiting recommendations of borderline content to include videos featuring minors in risky situations.”
In the first quarter of 2019, the site says it removed over 800,000 videos that violated the company’s child safety policies.
