YouTube has closed a loophole by which porn videos were apparently left unmoderated if they had Irish language titles.
The Google-owned video giant has a tough stance on ‘adult’ videos, and actively moderates content that violates its policies.
But it was noticed in Ireland recently that not everything was being filtered out - at least, not everything with an Irish name.
Maitíú Ó Coimín with the Irish language Tuairisc news site discovered the flaw.
He told the BBC that he found about 20 pornographic films after searching YouTube for the Irish word for film ('scannán' and 'scannáin').
“The accounts all have an Asian woman as a profile picture," he said. "These were real pornographic films."
Needless to say, the films were in violation of YouTube’s policy on adult content and were swiftly removed. These policies state:
“Sexually explicit content like pornography is not allowed. Videos containing fetish content will be removed or age-restricted depending on the severity of the act in question. In most cases, violent, graphic or humiliating fetishes are not allowed to be shown on YouTube.
A video that contains nudity or other sexual content may be allowed if the primary purpose is educational, documentary, scientific or artistic, and it isn't gratuitously graphic. For example, a documentary on breast cancer would be appropriate, but posting clips out of context from the same documentary might not be.”
And while porn might always be a problem on YouTube, last year a product manager at the company said that it’s become less of a big deal all the time:
“There's some algorithmic detection but also rely upon community flagging and human review,” said Hunter Walk in a Quora Q&A.
“Truth is, in 2014 there are many more permissive places to upload porn so my guess is that YouTube has actually seen porn decrease as a percentage of policy violations over time.”