Major brands pull out YouTube ads after child porn furor

After the story on how YouTube is unknowingly facilitating ‘soft-core pedophilia’ broke, major brands are pulling their ads out; they will stay indefinitely until the Google video streaming service corrects this major errors.

The story, from YouTuber Matt Watson, confirms that ad-spots from Disney, Nestlé, AT&T, Hasbro, and many others have been monetising from these content. According to Bloomberg, the move to pull out all YouTube ads only affect the US. Similar actions are already taking place at Epic Games.

With so many moving to pause or totally halt any advertising efforts on YouTube, it will have an effect on the ad spending; this is especially true for these pornographic content as it now stands at less than US$8,000. Moreover, YouTube is planning refunds to its advertisers.

Gizmodo also shares how a YouTube spokesperson confirms that the video streaming service is working round-the-clock to tackle the issue. It has already moved to disable comments on millions of videos that feature children; it has also deleted more than 400 accounts that have made comments on these videos. Some of the videos have also been taken down.

YouTube is also reporting any illegal comments to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Text by: Victor Yap