Pedophile Ring Operating on YouTube; YouTube Doesn't Respond Until Advertisers Walk

YouTube shutting down comments on tens of millions of videos with minors after accusations of enabling ‘child porn'

Well, not really after 'accusations',

but after advertisers began to withdraw

© Global Look Press / dpa/ Raphael Knipping

YouTube has disabled comments under "tens of millions of videos" with children doing innocuous things such as yoga, after an investigation revealed the presence of preying pedophiles and sparked a mass exodus of advertisers.

In a blog post on Thursday, the video-sharing site said it had started closing down comment sections on videos featuring minors "that could be subject to predatory behavior." Such videos number in the "tens of millions," YouTube said, promising to expand the purge "over the next few months."

The Google-owned company said that only "a small number of creators will be able to keep the comments enabled on these types of videos."

The accounts that would be allowed to stay open to user feedback, will have to step up their moderating game and will be required "to demonstrate a low risk of predatory behavior." YouTube said that it would directly engage with creators of these high-risk videos.

The platform did not specify the type of content at the center of its newest crackdown apart from noting that it features "young and older minors."

Advertisers flee

Thursday's update is part the company's ongoing efforts to stop big corporate advertisers from fleeing en masse after a viral exposé revealed how YouTube was inadvertently helping pedophiles thrive on the platform.

It all started with a vlog posted by YouTuber Matt Watson on February 17, in which he lambasted the hands-off approach YouTube allegedly takes on pedophiles by not only allowing them to share timestamps with children in comprising positions, but also automatically suggesting videos with the same type of content.

"I have discovered a wormhole, as I would call it, into a soft-core pedophile ring on YouTube. Here pedophiles are trading social media content, they are providing links to actual child porn," Watson said in the video.

Once you enter into this wormhole, the YouTube algorithm is glitching out to a point that nothing but these videos exist. So that facilitates pedophiles' ability to find this content.

The members of this no-so-clandestine ring, Watson said, are openly "trading unlisted videos" and links to actual pornography apparently "through some kind of glitch or error" in the YouTube programming.

Watson took a particular issue with that the videos in question have been monetized by YouTube, with YouTube effectively profiting from the pedophile-generated views by showing ads paid for by corporate giants.

"What this is – it is child exploitation," Watson said.  Having racked up over 3 million views, his video was followed by an in-depth investigation by Wired last week. The magazine reported that Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Fortnite, Maybelline, L'Oreal, Grammarly and others ran pre-roll advertisements along these.

Following the public outrage, Fortnite, McDonalds,  Nestlé, AT&T, Kellogg and other companies removed their ads from YouTube, prompting the video-streaming service to limit monetization of some of the videos that include minors and encourage users to flag the videos by selecting “child abuse" in the reporting tool.

Following the latest policy update on Thursday, Nestle said that it had returned to the platform several days ago, after YouTube announced it was tightening the screws on content featuring minors. While the advertiser boycott is likely to be short-lived, their flight appears to be what had triggered YouTube to eventually take action against child predators in the first place. Reports of a 'pedophile ring' openly functioning inside YouTube have been circulating for years, but the platform had not taken any decisive action.

It would have been nice if YouTube had actually acted on the accusations rather than ignoring them until it started costing them money. It's pretty obvious where their priorities lie and it's not with protecting innocent children.

Finally, Online Pornography to be Studied for Its Effect on Children

Liberals to back Tory MP’s bid to study violent and degrading sexual material online

Kady O'Malley, Ottawa Citizen, Postmedia News

    Conservative MP Arnold Viersen wants MPs to investigate the public health effects of violent
    and sexually explicit online material. Jonathan Hayward / The Canadian Press

Conservative MP Arnold Viersen wants MPs to investigate the public health effects of violent and sexually explicit online material.

MPs on the Commons health committee may soon find themselves poking around some of the darkest and most disturbing corners of the Internet.

The government has announced it intends to back Conservative MP Arnold Viersen’s bid to have the committee “examine the public health effects of the ease of access and viewing of online violent and degrading sexually explicit material on children, women and men,” and report its findings back to the House next year.

In fact, by the looks of it, Viersen may well see his proposal pass with near-unanimous support, as the list of joint seconders reveals support within every caucus – even the Bloc Quebecois, and lone Green Party representative Elizabeth May.

The only real question now is when that vote will take place. Viersen kicked off the first hour of debate on Monday, but the motion has now been bumped to the bottom of the priority list.

Of course it has. After all, we're just talking about another generation of kids caught up in the rape culture.

That means it may not come back up in rotation before the House rises for the holidays in mid-December, which will push the start date for the study into the new year.

So, what's the hurry? What's a few dozen or a few hundred girls getting raped anyway? What's that compared to lowering the age of consensual anal sex?

C'mon Justin. Push this through, it is badly needed. The easy availability of porn is seriously affecting adolescent brain development.

Rotherham Child Sexual Abuse Victims to Take Police to Court

Lawyer acting for 65 victims is attempting to force 

South Yorkshire police to hand over confidential 

records on how they handled decades of abuse

 Police station in Rotherham town centre, Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

 Lawyer David Greenwood says the police ‘are putting up stiff resistance’ to releasing the files.

Lisa O'Carroll and Josh Halliday

Victims of child sexual abuse in Rotherham are set to take South Yorkshire police to court to force them to hand over confidential records on how they handled decades of abuse in the town.

A Sheffield lawyer, acting for 65 victims, has said he has no other choice as the force is refusing to disclose data, call logs and other documentation that could establish if allegations that officers turned a blind eye to grooming in the town were true.

David Greenwood believes if he can prove this is so, the girls, now women in their 30s and 40s, will have a case under Article 3 of the Human Rights Act, which protects against torture but also “inhuman or degrading treatment”.

But he says the police “are putting up stiff resistance” and he plans to go to court to seek an order from a judge forcing them to hand over all their files.

Of course they are, they need time to make the files disappear in the night.

His action comes as four men and two women face sentencing on Friday for a catalogue of crimes including rape, indecent assault, forced prostitution and forced imprisonment over 16 years.

Brothers Arshid, Basharat and Bannaras Hussain, who together were guilty of 48 offences, are expected to get lengthy jail sentences. Also being sentenced in Sheffield are their uncle Qurban Ali and associates Karen MacGregor and Shelley Davies.

The Hussains carried out their brutal crimes with impunity, with one victim telling the jury she felt they were invincible because they “owned” Rotherham.

Several of the 12 women who gave evidence at the trial said they reported their abuse to police in the 1990s and the 2000s but no action was taken.

Now that justice in the courts has been done, they are hoping for compensation to help fund counselling and other support they may need in years to come.

Greenwood said police were refusing to hand over the files on the grounds that if the victims saw the records, their witness accounts in potential future criminal trials could be contaminated.

Contaminated with what? You didn't do anything!

Initially he met with the same resistance from Rotherham metropolitan borough council, which the victims are also planning to sue over alleged negligence.

The council has now conceded that it is safe to make the disclosures after Greenwood gave a legal undertaking that the documents would not be shared with the victims, but used to establish if there was evidence for civil proceedings.

“The police are putting up stiff resistance,” said Greenwood. “The police and the CPS don’t like it. I have offered them the same undertaking as the council and they are still saying ‘no’.”

He plans to make an application for pre-action disclosure in the next two weeks.

Detailed information about suspected child abusers in Rotherham was passed to police more than a decade ago – but never acted on, a whistleblower has claimed.

Adele Gladman last year described how her evidence was ignored by Rotherham council and South Yorkshire police after she provided them with information about suspected abusers.

In evidence to the home affairs select committee, originally given anonymously, she said she had raised concerns with police as far back as 2001 that children were “actively being placed at risk by social care and the police because of a lack of action against suspected abusers and a lack of support and understanding of the issues for the children concerned”.

She said her concerns were repeatedly dismissed by police as anecdotal and when she submitted her report to South Yorkshire police, the feedback she got was that it was unhelpful.

Recognising their past trauma, Greenwood has urged victims of historic abuse not to rush forward to join action for compensation.

“The difficulty for the girls is trusting anyone in authority. Getting details from them is off-the-scale difficult. They could be entitled to compensation but if it’s too distressing for them, I would urge women to be careful and not to come forward until they are ready and they have support.”

His action comes as Prof Alexis Jay, the author of the devastating 2014 report into abuse in the town, said Rotherham authorities “disbelieved” the scale of criminality in the town.

“For many in a position to do something, the exploitation of these children and young people was simply not considered a priority,” she told the Guardian.

“The people in the council who managed these homes should have taken a far more direct role in assisting the residential staff to take action to deal with it, along with the police.”

Jay, who has been appointed a member of the panel in the Goddard inquiry into child sexual exploitation, said she was concerned that grooming had effectively gone underground because it was now perpetrated online.

“A worrying aspect of exploitation has been the more recent one of internet grooming, which was emerging latterly in Rotherham as it was elsewhere in the UK,” she said.

She has called for better education about exploitation in schools.

“The young people I spoke to in Rotherham were scathing about the sex education they received, which didn’t cover a range of concerns they had about their sexuality, and had mainly focussed on preventing teenage pregnancy.”

One of the victims of the Rotherham gang being sentenced on Friday has also urged David Cameron to introduce education about age-appropriate relationships into schools.

Jessica (not her real name), who was abused by the mastermind in the Rotherham gang, Arshid Hussain, is among those planning to sue the police and Rotherham council for compensation over a lost childhood.

It was revealed on Wednesday that the Independent Police Complaints Commission was investigating 54 named officers as part of a major inquiry into allegations about how South Yorkshire police dealt with child sexual exploitation in Rotherham.

Allegations made by 41 complainants range from a failure to act on reported child abuse to corruption.