Darktube – The dark side of Youtube

Music, vlogs, tutorials, challenges or cat content. All of this is an integral part of YouTube. On the one hand, bright sunshine, on the other glorification of violence and horror. If you want, everyone can find animal abuse, child pornography or tutorials on how to make Molotov cocktails on YouTube. And this is despite the fact that according to the guidelines and rules, such things should not even be possible. How can it be that the rules exist but are not enforced in some cases?

Everyone knows that every coin has its flip side. So Youtube also has its downside. The “Darktube“. Kind of like the darknet, just on the video platform. Videos, like cooking live animals, or animal guillotines. All this can be found easily on YouTube.

Violence and animal cruelty despite guidelines on Youtube

But like any platform, YouTube has rules and guidelines. If a video violates them, it is deleted. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to be. However, the reality is quite different. About 500 hours of video material are uploaded every minute. Controlling all that is difficult, no question! The rules are pretty strict at first glance, but the interpretation is always different. Sometimes the rules are enforced very strictly and videos with a minimal sign of a rule violation are deleted. Then there are enough videos that obviously break the rules, but those are allowed and tolerated.

How else can it be that a video of brutally killing a mouse through a maze of electricity can still be seen and have millions of clicks?

According to the rules, animal abuse is prohibited, yet there are over 80 channels with thousands of videos showing just such a thing: Animal abuse

Also prohibited is glorification of violence and incitement to violence. Well…A Youtuber had some fun and uploaded a video showing a fight scene. He replaced the faces of the original scene with the face of Trump and his opponents. Now you can see in this video how Trump shoots his opponents. Incitement to violence? Glorification of violence? For any normal person, yes. Not for YouTube. The content is purely fictitious, according to the reasoning behind the video not being deleted, but merely not being accessible to everyone due to an age restriction.

So if the level of violence is not enough, it only gets an age restriction. It’s the way the video is made that matters, not the content. That’s what we can learn from this!

In general, it can be said that YouTube has a rather arbitrary approach to questionable content.

The guidelines, which are very difficult to understand and it is easy to lose track of them, not only specify what can be uploaded, but also who is allowed to use YouTube. However, the law for the protection of minors is not always implemented as it should be. In some cases, it almost seems as if it doesn’t matter at all.

Children can easily pretend to be of age when creating a Google account, since no proof of age is requested. And YouTube makes it easy for minors. You can simply search for it on YouTube and find various tutorials on how to circumvent the protection of minors on this video platform.

Through this arbitrary implementation of rules and policies, YouTube still provides too much space for pedophiles or other criminals to serve their needs.

While more and more attention is being paid to such things, it is still far from good enough.

The YouTube world is not looking the other way! More and more content creators are actively campaigning for the deletion of questionable videos and are openly and honestly criticizing YouTube! Topics such as child pedophilia, glorification of violence or “hate speech” are being addressed and viewers are thus being sensitized. With so much video material being uploaded every minute, it’s hard for YouTube to keep track of everything.

From the editorial office:

Our appeal to you: Take action, protect yourselves, your fellow human beings and YouTube! If you notice a video that obviously violates the guidelines and rules, then report it! Even if it is not deleted, you make YouTube and the person behind such a video aware of it! Do not look away, but look much closer!