YouTube comment sections are causing brand safety backlash (DIS, PG, NSRGY, AMZN, NFLX, ADDYY)

youtube was under fire in 2017; facebook in 2018 Business Insider Intelligence

Nestl, Disney, and Fortnite owner Epic Games have all temporarily removed their ads from the site after ads appeared alongside videos of young girls where comments made by users were sexualizing.

Although the videos themselves were not at issue in and of themselves, YouTube is now under fire for failing to curtail what a vlogger called a soft core pedophilia ring active on the site.

This cycle of back-and-forth between advertisers and YouTube is likely to keep repeating on open platforms because of the volume of uploaded content on the platform.

This isnt the first time that YouTube has encountered advertiser pullback in response to public backlash and brand safety concerns related to bad ad placements or extremist content: YouTubes so-called Adpocalypse of 2017 resulted in hundreds of companies puling spend from the platform. P&G, the biggest advertiser in the US, kept ads off of YouTube for more than a year.

Last April, advertisers also fled when ads for more than 300 companies including Amazon, Netflix, and Adidas ran alongside videos pushing extremist ideologies. This latest round of backlash beats a well worn path in which the media, users, or creators express outrage over the sites negligence; advertisers react either by pausing ads on the site presumably until YouTube can give them reassurances of progress or by releasing statements to express their disappointment or reinforce their brand values; and finally, advertisers eventually return to the platform.

The latest round of backlash highlights an additional challenge on top of YouTube's already overwhelming content moderation responsibilities.The volume of uploaded content on YouTube is simply too enormous to 100% effectively detect and enforce, even with AI and thousands of human reviewers: 450 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

While YouTube said in a statement that its policies extend to any content, including comments, incidents have typically focused more on the quality of YouTubes videos. The backlash around user comments will only increase content moderation pressures for YouTube, and could prompt the platform to focus more on the health of conversation on its platform, similar to Twitter.

To keep advertisers happy, YouTube could increasingly emphasize its progress on more strict enforcement of its policies in comments, demonstrating that its content moderation commitments go beyond video alone.