Whoops! YouTube discovers hidden porn in Irish language videos

In the last few years, YouTube has taken a serious stand against pornography. As its community guidelines clearly state:

YouTube is not for pornography or sexually explicit content. If this describes your video, even if it’s a video of yourself, don’t post it on YouTube. Also, be advised that we work closely with law enforcement and we report child exploitation. Please read our Safety Center and stay safe on YouTube.

That last rule and warning echoes that of parent company Google which last year started working with authorities to track down child abuse images in Gmail.

Still, this hasn’t stopped users from finding loopholes in its system. Upon searching for Irish films on YouTube, journalist Maitíú Ó Coimín came across one of these loopholes — a series of pornographic films disguised using Gealic titles.

“I looked a bit further into it, and there were about 15 to 20 films of a questionable nature,” he told the BBC. “These were real pornographic films.”

The user’s account, along with the blue movies contained within it, were removed.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise as Google has made its attitude against porn clear over the past few years.

However, it also raises the inevitable question on free speech. A recent case in point being British internet service provider Sky’s announcement of filtering “inappropriate content for its users”, opening up a can of worms on censorship.

Google’s moral stand is a big trade-off considering an estimated 30% of the internet industry is made up of porn — seeing more monthly visitors than Twitter, Netflix and Amazon combined. This is according to the public awareness group, Enough Is Enough, which found that mobile porn is expected to reach an incredible US$2.8-billion by 2015.

Image via BBC