Tag: youtube

YouTube Expands AI Age Checks, Users Face ID Verification

Google’s video platform is tightening its controls, and a growing number of YouTube users are suddenly finding themselves locked out of content unless they hand over proof of age through ID verification.

The new direction stems from YouTube’s decision to push its AI-driven age estimation system much more broadly than before.

The technology, which YouTube began experimenting with in Europe before confirming its US debut in July, surveils people’s accounts and examines everything from account details and viewing habits to search activity.

Those surveillance signals are then used to guess whether someone is under 18.

The pace of enforcement has accelerated sharply. Within the 24 hours leading up to September 24, Reddit’s r/youtube subreddit saw a flood of posts from users saying their accounts were suddenly flagged for verification, suggesting a big uptick in restrictions.

Accounts flagged as too young are immediately restricted: targeted advertising is reduced, recommendations deemed unsafe are cut back, and access to adult material is blocked outright.

When YouTube’s system determines that an account likely belongs to someone under 18, the platform automatically enforces a set of limits designed to control how the service is used.

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Google Says Users Removed Over COVID-19 Views Can Rejoin YouTube

YouTube creators who were removed over their views concerning COVID-19 or the 2020 election can rejoin the service, Google and its parent company, Alphabet, said in a Sept. 23 letter.

Rules in place prohibiting some discussion of COVID-19 and the election were lifted in 2023 or 2024, Google said through its lawyers.

“Today, YouTube’s Community Guidelines allow for a wider range of content regarding COVID-19 and elections integrity,” it stated. “Reflecting the Company’s commitment to free expression, YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the Company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect.”

People whose channels were suspended or taken down included Dan Bongino, the current deputy director of the FBI.

The company said it values conservative content creators and recognizes they regularly land compelling interviewers with politicians, business leaders, and others.

Google described the COVID-19 pandemic as an unprecedented time that forced online platforms to “balance freedom of expression” with moderation of content “that could result in real-world harm.” The situation was complicated by top officials in the Biden administration pressuring the company to take action against certain COVID-19 content “that did not violate its policies,” it said.

“It is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden Administration, attempts to dictate how the Company moderates content, and the Company has consistently fought against those efforts on First Amendment grounds,” the company stated.

YouTube’s medical content policies evolved throughout the pandemic, as health authorities changed their guidance, the company said. The company is now allowing a wide range of content on COVID-19 and elections.

“In contrast to other large platforms, YouTube has not operated a fact-checking program that identifies and compensates fact-checking partners to produce content to support moderation,” the letter states. “YouTube has not and will not empower fact-checkers to take action on or label content across the Company’s services.”

The letter was sent to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.

“Whether you were an established YouTube presence with a massive following like Dan Bongino or just were starting out to express political views there, YOU will have an opportunity to come back onto the platform if you were censored for engaging in political speech,” Jordan wrote on X. “This is another victory in the fight against censorship.”

Google did not respond to a request for comment.

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Google Admits Biden White House Pressured Content Removal, Promises to Restore Banned YouTube Accounts

After years of denying bias, Google now concedes that it gave in to pressure from the Biden White House to remove content that did not breach its own rules.

The admission comes alongside a promise to restore access to YouTube accounts permanently removed for political speech related to COVID-19 and elections, topics where government officials had applied behind-the-scenes pressure to control the narrative.

This move follows sustained scrutiny from the House Judiciary Committee, which Reclaim The Net covered extensively, led by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), who issued a subpoena and spearheaded an investigation that revealed the extent of government influence on content moderation decisions at Google.

In a letter from its legal representative, Google confirmed that it faced pressure from the federal government to suppress lawful speech.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

Google revealed that it had been contacted multiple times by top federal officials regarding content on its platforms, even when that content did not break any rules.

The company stated that “Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies.”

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FDA Official Pressures YouTube Into Removing a Channel For Posting His Own Vaccine Comments

Last week, a top official with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) apparently filed a bogus copyright claim to get a critic’s YouTube account taken down. This is an inappropriate act of censorship that, not long ago, conservatives would rightly have stood against.

“Jonathan Howard, a neurologist and psychiatrist in New York City, received an email from YouTube on Friday night, which stated that Vinay Prasad, who is the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, had demanded the removal of six videos of himself from Howard’s YouTube channel,” The Guardian reported this week. “Howard’s entire channel has now been deleted by YouTube, which cited copyright infringement.”

On his channel, Howard hosted videos of public health officials—including Prasad, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya—making statements during the COVID-19 pandemic that turned out to be untrue or overly myopic. “I had accumulated about 350 videos, almost all of which were short clips of famous doctors saying absurd things,” Howard wrote in a blog post, “that herd immunity had arrived in the spring of 2021 and that RFK Jr. was an honest broker about vaccines, for example.” Howard is also critical of Prasad’s stance on vaccines, which Prasad now has the authority to regulate.

According to an email Howard posted, YouTube “terminated” his channel after “multiple copyright strikes” against his videos, and the “removal request” came from Prasad.

“Publishing someone else’s videos without modification or commentary is a clear copyright violation,” an FDA spokesperson told The Guardian. “The mission of Johnathan Howard was not medical transparency, but personal profit by grifting and stealing someone else’s intellectual property.”

“My YouTube channel had 256 subscribers and its videos were typically seen by dozens of people,” Howard wrote. “I never promoted the channel and made no money from it.” Besides, U.S. law allows for fair use of copyrighted material, which means someone can use protected content for purposes such as “criticism, comment, news reporting,” or “research” without the creator’s permission.

Howard is the author of the book We Want Them Infected, which criticized doctors and public health officials who advocated a herd immunity strategy for dealing with COVID-19. Howard says such warnings fed into anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. His YouTube channel collected videos of people who are now in charge of public health institutions, making what he feels were irresponsible claims during the pandemic.

But whether you agree with Howard or not, it is wrong and hypocritical for Prasad to silence his critics in this way.

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YouTube commenter arrested after allegedly posting threat to ‘shoot and skin’ Black preschoolers

A North Carolina man is facing federal charges over a comment posted online in which he allegedly threatened to “shoot up a black pre-school,” after which the victims would be “skinned,” according to an FBI probable cause affidavit reviewed by The Independent.

Zachary Charles Newell, 25, was arrested Monday on one count of making an interstate threat to kidnap or injure.

On Sunday, a cybercrime team at Google flagged a disturbingly violent YouTube comment to the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center, the affidavit states. It says the comment had been uploaded to the video-sharing site four days prior, at 10:37 a.m. local time, by a user with the screenname “CommentatorsHateMe.”

Posted beneath a video by YouTuber “Andrew Esquire,” a Florida lawyer whose real name is Andrew Clifford d’Adesky, CommentatorsHateMe wrote, “I’m gonna shoot up a black pre-school. 20 black babies will be shot and then skinned like the animals they are,” the affidavit goes on.

In the video, d’Adesky was discussing a reported Los Angeles police investigation into Raja Jackson, an MMA fighter who apparently went off-script while making an appearance in a professional wrestling match and put his opponent in the hospital with severe injuries.

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YouTube Faces Backlash for Quietly Using AI to Alter Shorts Without Creator Consent

Some YouTube creators are calling foul after learning the platform has been quietly using AI to modify their Shorts without notification or approval.

For months, users have noticed odd visual quirks in some Shorts, such as skin that looks overly airbrushed, clothes appearing sharper than expected, or facial features slightly distorted.

The alterations are subtle enough to go unnoticed in isolation, but side-by-side comparisons have revealed inconsistencies that many say make their videos feel unnatural or artificial.

Musician and creator Rhett Shull spotlighted the issue in a video that has drawn over 700,000 views. Comparing his uploads across platforms, he pointed out that YouTube had seemingly softened and retouched his Shorts without permission.

“I did not consent to this,” said Shull. “Replacing or enhancing my work with some AI upscaling system not only erodes trust with the audience, but it also erodes my trust in YouTube.”

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Australia Bans YouTube for Children Under 16

The government of Australia has reversed its decision to grant YouTube an exemption from its sweeping ban on social media for children under 16. YouTube’s parent company, Google, is threatening legal action, but Australian officials vowed to push ahead with the ban.

“We can’t control the ocean, but we can police the sharks, and that is why we will not be intimidated by legal threats when this is a genuine fight for the wellbeing of Australian kids,” Communications Minister Anika Wells said when Google threatened to sue.

Australia announced its “world-leading” plan to bar children from using social media in November 2024. Despite resistance from Internet freedom advocates, and difficult questions about precisely how such a ban could be implemented, the relevant legislation was quickly passed, and the ban is set to take effect in December 2025.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gave a press conference on Wednesday in which he pledged to promote Australia’s social media ban to other countries at the United Nations General Assembly in September.

“I know from the discussions I have had with other leaders that they are looking at this and they are considering what impact social media is having on young people in their respective nations, it is a common experience,” Albanese said, appearing with the parents of children who were bullied to death on social media.

“We don’t do this easily. What we do, though, is respond to something that is needed here,” he said.

YouTube was granted an exemption from the ban when it was passed by Parliament in November, for several reasons. One was that YouTube was viewed as an important source of information for teens, so even though it carried potentially harmful content, the good was thought to outweigh the bad.

LGBTQ groups insisted YouTube was an important resource for gay and lesbian children, while public health groups said they used the platform to distribute important information to young people. Australian parents found YouTube less alarming that competing platforms like TikTok. YouTube also featured less direct interaction between users than most of the social media platforms that troubled Australian regulators.

A final objection to banning YouTube was that logging into the service is not required – visitors can access the vast majority of the platform’s content as “guests.” This meant there was no practical way to hold YouTube accountable for policing the age of its users.

Naturally, many of the platforms that were targeted by Australia’s social media ban resented the exemption granted to YouTube. These complaints might have had some bearing on the government’s decision to cancel YouTube’s exemption.

According to Australia’s ABC News, YouTube was added to the social media ban at the request of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, who wrote a letter to Wells asking for YouTube’s exemption to be rescinded. Inman Grant said her recommendation was based on a survey of 2,600 children that found nearly 40 percent of them had been exposed to “harmful content” while using YouTube.

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YouTube Eliminates Thousands of Chinese and Russian Propaganda Channels

Google said on Monday it has taken down almost 11,000 channels on YouTube for spreading propaganda. It allegedly linked 7,700 of them to China, and another 2,000 to Russia.

Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said the Chinese YouTube channels distributed content in English and Mandarin that promoted China’s interests, glorified dictator Xi Jinping, and criticized America’s positions on international affairs. Some of the Chinese channels were also highly critical of the Philippines, which is engaged in maritime territorial disputes with China.

The Russian channels allegedly employed various languages to criticize Western governments, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and Ukraine. Some of the Russian channels also spread information supportive of China and Iran.

TAG’s latest quarterly report also announced the termination of YouTube influence channels linked to Turkey, Romania, Iran, Ghana, Azerbaijan, and Israel.

The 43 channels linked to Turkey were “sharing content in Turkish that was supportive of the Turkish Victory Party.”

The Victory Party, known by its Turkish acronym ZP, is a nationalist party strongly critical of the Turkish government for taking in large numbers of refugees from Syria. It also opposes the government’s efforts to negotiate with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a violent separatist organization.

ZP leader Umit Ozdag was arrested in January for allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and “inciting hatred against migrants.”

TAG said the 12 terminated Romanian channels were “sharing content in Romanian that was supportive of a specific Romanian political party,” but did not name the party.

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Government REFUSES to release ‘eSafety’ data behind YouTube kids ban

Labor Communications Minister Anika Wells has refused to release the research that underpins the eSafety Commissioner’s push to ban 15-year-olds from using YouTube.

The contentious recommendation, made by eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, has sparked widespread concern among stakeholders and the public. Yet Wells has declined to release the data informing the advice, citing the regulator’s preference to delay publication.

Sky News reports that the eSafety regulator has repeatedly blocked its attempts to access the full research, instead opting to “drip feed” select findings to the public over several months. This is despite the Albanese government expected to make a final decision in just weeks.

A spokesperson for Wells said: “The minister is taking time to consider the eSafety Commissioner’s advice. The minister has been fully briefed by the eSafety Commissioner including the research methodology behind her advice.”

However, the Commissioner’s own “Keeping Kids Safe Online: Methodology” report reveals several weaknesses in the data. The survey relied entirely on self-reported responses taken at one point in time and used “non-probability-based sampling” from online panels, described in the report as “convenience samples”.

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