YouTube launches Safety Controls

Following our publication yesterday of our new white paper on the importance of moderating your brand's presence in social networks, I was really happy to hear this morning about the new YouTube safety feature:' 'Safety Mode'.  This is a new filter feature which can be turned on and 'locked' (so they say) and will filter out offensive content.

Turning 'Safety Mode' on apparently:

• Filters search results - so that a search for 'naked' for example reveals no results. Other searches return only 'safe' results.
• Hides comments by default - users can choose to view them again, but all offensive words will be asterixed out
• Makes it impossible to view links where the content falls foul of the filter.
• Applies to the column on the right hand side also, so that all related videos, videos being watched now etc. are also filtered.
• Can be locked to stop your 14-yr-old satisfying his curiosity against your wishes.  According to the video, you just set your preference, log in to your account, and once you log out again it's set, and can't be unset unless you have the account password (this did seem to work, although I was able to look in with my Google password combo too)

Great stuff from YouTube, and the need for it is ably demonstrated by the bunch of imbeciles who have commented underneath.  But I turned on 'Safety Mode' and they obligingly disappeared :-)

I do however have two queries - easy to understand that a black list word filter has been applied to text, including comments, titles and descriptions.  But as YouTube has millions of UGC items, and is is not feasible for moderators to post-moderate every one., who is categorising the content uploaded?  If I describe my film as 'Sweet Valentine' and it contains pornography, unless it is flagged by another user, would the Safety Mode stop it being returned in a search?

In an attempt to test it, I did two searches for 'sex', with and without the Safety control.  See the screengrabs for the results - they do vary a little, so I can see a couple of the more dubious videos have gone - but what hasn't disappeared is the sponsored 'featured' video, which I would have thought fell firmly on the wrong side of the safety filter.

 

 

Is this a YouTube Fail or a really good YouTube attempt at protecting vulnerable users?  Let me know if it works for you ... and if anyone from YouTube can get in touch and explain how they categorise ALL their content, I'd be really happy.