YouTube's Recent Controversies: The Impact Of Inappropriate Ads And Security Breaches

YouTube has recently been in the news for all the wrong reasons and its problems don’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. Previously, the company made headlines when a number of VEVO channels were hacked by a group called Kuroi’SH & Prosox. Following that, we discovered that the channel search on the platform was broken and was redirecting users to a different channel.

Now, the company is facing backlash for serving porn ads on trending videos. According to a recent report from Motherboard, a number of Twitter users and YouTubers have complained that a porn ad shows up before videos on popular YouTube pages, including Pewdiepie, Markiplier, and Dude Perfect. The ad features a woman dancing and has a link on the bottom left called “Hot Girl 2018”.

While the auto-playing ad itself isn’t pornographic, the link that appears alongside it contains an objectionable image. Motherboard traced the ad back to a YouTube channel named “1.347.852 views” which hosts multiple videos of the same woman dancing and has an avatar of a woman holding a child. The ad is uploaded on the channel under the title “Sequence 01 2”.

The video has gathered around 300,000 views, and the concerning link redirects to a CamSoda-branded webcam model page. Many users on Twitter have expressed their worries regarding this explicit ad. When approached about this issue, YouTube responded to Motherboard that:

“We have clear policies against ads featuring graphic adult content. When we become aware of an ad that violates our policies, we immediately remove it and take appropriate action, including, and up to, suspending the responsible account.”

The problematic channel has since been removed from the platform, along with the auto-playing ad videos. Additionally, the company has provided upset users with a link to the AdWords troubleshooting page where they can share feedback on ads displayed on the platform.