Google’s awesome content moderation bots are back in action. After previously including things like including suicide instructions in a kids video and the whole Elsagate issue , YouTube is now labeling horror videos as “for kids”. Worst of all, it goes against the will of the creator. The video had previously been tagged as being for people over 18 and YouTube decided it was for kids and would not allow the creator to restore the content’s rating.
This video is from the Local58TV horror series. The creator, Kiers Straub, checked his account over the weekend and found that his content not for children was detected by YouTube’s content moderation AI and automatically flagged for children.
congrats @youtube on the decision to auto-designate @LOCAL58TV ’s “show for children” as FOR KIDS despite my having set it as inappropriate for kids. i also can’t change it voluntarily without an *appeal* pic.twitter.com/dnhmzL9hbi
“For kids”in this context means that Google has flagged the video for inclusion in the “YouTube Kids”app, which is a separate interface for YouTube that should only show a “safe”curated YouTube snippet. The “Children’s”flag also means that the video must comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), so comments are disabled.
Wikipedia. Page about Contingency
However, YouTube does not embrace the atmosphere of Local58TV. He automatically labeled one episode titled “The Kids Show “as being for kids. You can see how the AI bot can mix up the wires from this title, but the description immediately says “Not for Children”and the creator, Straub, originally set the video’s age rating to “18+”when it was uploaded.
The episode is a black-and-white cartoon in which a cute cartoon skeleton wanders around a cemetery looking for a cute cartoon skeleton of a girlfriend, but finds terrifying, more realistic skeletons and other creatures in open graves. At the end of the video, seemingly from depression, a cute skeleton lies down in the grave and dies, turning into a realistic skeleton. A cartoon is something that an AI bot might not understand, but a human might immediately tell that a disturbing video is not suitable for children. YouTube certainly doesn’t suffer for money, having made $28.8 billion last year, but it doesn’t hire a significant number of human moderators.
Not only does YouTube flag a video that is explicitly labeled “inappropriate for children”as “made for children,”it also prevents the creator from changing it back. The video content is now tagged “Made for Kids (installed by YouTube)”and Straub is forced to file an appeal with YouTube to correct the video’s age rating.
Even if you use moderation bots, it doesn’t make much sense for YouTube to take that position. Every time you upload a video, YouTube asks if it’s suitable for children. Since YouTube already has this data, it’s not clear why it would ever attempt to automatically categorize videos, especially by lowering an age rating that was explicitly set to “adults only”. When it comes to issues as sensitive and subjective as whether a child should view certain content, it seems like Google should be careful.
At the time of publication, Straub made the issue public 20 hours ago and it has never been resolved. You can tell the video is still tagged for kids because of the disabled comment section and “Try YouTube Kids!”advertising below. You also only get offers for other “kids”content that doesn’t seem to have as much death on the surface as Local58TV’s regular content.