Digital Regulation

 US Law Section 230 (1996) 

A media platform is NOT responsible for the content on their site. The company must regulate it's own content as long as it acts in good faith. However, things like copyright, prostitutions, and sex trafficking are exemptions and must be taken down. 

YouTube's Regulation Policies

These guidelines are taken from the website

1) Sensitive content 

We hope to protect viewers, creators, and especially minors. That's why we've got rules around keeping children safe, sex & nudity, and self harm. Learn what's allowed on YouTube and what to do if you see content that doesn't follow these policies.

• Nudity & sexual content policies
• Thumbnails policy
• Child safety policy
• Suicide & self-harm policy
• Vulgar language policy

2) Violent or dangerous content

Hate speech, predatory behavior, graphic violence, malicious attacks, and content that promotes harmful or dangerous behavior isn't allowed on YouTube.

• Harmful or dangerous content policies
• Violent or graphic content policies
• Violent criminal organizations policy
• Hate speech policy
• Harassment & cyberbullying policies

Elsagate and children's safety on the YouTube

Back in 2017 there had been an uproar in children's safety on YouTube regarding the many many disturbing ang inappropriate content uploaded on YouTube geared towards to children.

The term Elsagate is now a neologism that refer to controversial kids videos on YouTube involving many IPs that are popular with kids, the most known example of this is Elsa and Spiderman, which is where the term Elsa-gate came from. 

Many of these videos containing Elsa often involve  graphic violence, sexual situations, fetishes, obscene language, drugs, alcohol, nudity, injections, disease, explicit toilet humor and dangerous activities. Many of the videos contain very disturbing thumbnail images and titles such as "EVIL SANTA KIDNAPS Frozen Elsa & Spiderman!" or "Frozen Elsa FLUSHES Spiderman in Toilet!". 

 Examples from Wikipedia.

A famous example of a YouTube channel being banned by the platform for Elsagate content is Toy freak. Toy freak started uploading YouTuber videos in 2012 up until 2017. The channel was run by Gregory Chism with his two young daughters. The content of the videos are filled with disturbing and inhumane situations involving the children. The channel was then terminated in 2017 with over 8.5 million subscribers. 

In 2019, COPPA fined YouTube for $170 million dollars for allowing Elsagate content target children's recommended pages and allowing the algorithm to fuel these channel's popularity. Now when an video is to be uploaded to YouTube there will be a tab where users have to label the content as kid friendly so children can't comment or be targeted by the algorithm.