A week ago, if you had Restricted Mode engaged on your YouTube account, all LGBTQ+ content would have been filtered out of you searches. No matter what the videos contained it would have been classified as “mature content”. It looks like that is now about to change.
YouTube pledge to amend their policy that classifies all LGBTQ+ content as “mature content” following a public outcry.
After a pubic outcry against the blanket ban, the platform have vowed to make amendments to their policies on what is classified as 18+ material.
YouTube VP of Product Management, Johanna Wright wrote the following statement on the site’s Creators Blog:
“Over the last several months, and most definitely over the last few days from LGBTQ and other communities, we’ve gotten lots of questions around what Restricted Mode is and how it works.”
“We designed this feature to broadly restrict content across more mature topics, whether these are videos that contain profanity, those that depict images or descriptions of violence, or discussion of certain diseases like addictions and eating disorders,” she continued. “Today, about 1.5 percent of YouTube’s daily views come from people who have Restricted Mode turned on. But we know this isn’t about numbers; it’s about the principle of anyone having access to important content and different points of view.”
“Our system sometimes make mistakes in understanding context and nuances when it assesses which videos to make available in Restricted Mode. For instance, the following videos are examples of where we got it wrong: Ash Hardell’s “Her Vows,” Calum McSwiggan’s “Coming Out To Grandma,” Jono and Ben’s “Woman interrupted during BBC interview,” and Tegan and Sara’s “BWU [OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO].”
“While the system will never be 100 percent perfect, as we said up top, we must and will do a better job. Thanks to your feedback, we’ve manually reviewed the example videos mentioned above and made sure they’re now available in Restricted Mode — we’ll also be using this input to better train our systems.”
Read the full statement here.
