YouTube CEO defends company’s efforts to keep violent content off the platform

About a week ago, there were reports of a paedophile ring on YouTube, where people were leaving inappropriate comments on innocuous videos of children. Days after that another report emerged, which claimed that YouTube has videos aimed at children that have scenes describing how to commit suicide. To tackle this, a few days ago, YouTube disabled comments on videos with children-related content.

While with all this YouTube grapples with moderating content across its platform, the company CEO Susan Wojcicki defended her company’s efforts to keep violent content off the video platform.

Speaking at the annual Lesbians Who Tech Summit in San Francisco, Wojcicki told New York Times’ Kara Swisher, “We take kids’ safety incredibly seriously, and I would say that the last two years have really been focused on the responsibility of our platforms,” said Wojcicki. “I’m a mom, I have five kids from 4 to 19. I understand kids, and as a parent, I really want to do the right thing,” she added.

Wojcicki also added that the change (disabling comments) may take away some of the users’ ability to share opinions, and some creator’s ability to interact with their viewers, but YouTube’s priority is to keep children safe first, and that’s what they are doing.

Earlier this year, YouTube had also said that it would change its algorithm to recommend less content that might be harmful.

Advertisers including Nestlé, AT&T and Fortnite-maker Epic Games pulled ads from YouTube last week after the inappropriate comments about children were unearthed by a popular YouTuber and media reports.