Google hiring thousands of moderators to counter YouTube abuse
Google will hire thousands of additional moderators next year following criticism that the company allowed offensive material, including hate speech and child abuse, to appear on its video-sharing website, YouTube. The move, which will take the company’s total moderating workforce to over 10,000, was announced by YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, who said that the company would also continue to develop machine-learning technology designed to automatically highlight content for removal. Last month, the New York Times reported that YouTube Kids was hosting violent and sexual material, sometimes featuring nursery rhymes and familiar characters.
Mr. Ducard said that while YouTube Kids may highlight some content, like Halloween videos in October, “it isn’t a curated experience.” Instead, “parents are in the driver’s seat,” he said, pointing to the ability to block channels, set usage timers and disable search results.

Parents are also encouraged to report inappropriate videos, which someone at YouTube then manually reviews, he said. He noted that in the past 30 days, “less than .005 percent” of the millions of videos viewed in the app were removed for being inappropriate.

“We strive,” he added, “to make that fraction even lower.”

Holly Hart of Gray, Tenn., said she was recently reading while her 3-year-old daughter was in the room when she noticed that Disney Junior characters in the video her daughter was watching started “turning into monsters and trying to feed each other to alligators.” An image previewing a recommended video showed the characters in a provocative pose.

“It was an eye-opener for me,” said Ms. Hart, who had downloaded the app because it was being used at the local elementary school.

Not all of the inappropriate videos feature cartoons. Alisa Clark Wilcken of Vernal, Utah, said her 4-year-old son had recently seen a video of a family playing roughly with a young girl, including a scene in which her forehead is shaved, causing her to wail and appear to bleed.