YouTube boss has a hypocritical rule
YOUTUBE’S CEO doesn’t let her own children use the platform.
Susan Wojcicki revealed in an interview with America’s 60 Minutes program that she didn’t allow her kids to use the main version of the Google-owned video streaming site, allowing them only to use YouTube Kids.
“I allow my younger kids to use YouTube Kids, but I limit the amount of time that they’re on it,” the executive and mother of five told interviewer Lesley Stahl.
“I think too much of anything is not a good thing.”
YouTube has come under fire in recent years for promoting inappropriate and sometimes disturbing videos to children through its algorithm.
The Kids version of the site, which launched in April and is designed for users aged under 13, provides a curated experience to children that walls them off from adult content.
In 2017, YouTube was slammed for making money off videos of scantily clad children that had attracted scores of lewd comments.
YouTube would run ads on these videos, many of which were uploaded by the children themselves, and then suggest another similar video of, say, a pre-teen in a nightgown.
Advertisers including Adidas, Mars and Hewlett-Packard pulled their YouTube advertising following an expose on the practice by the UK’s The Times.
In September this year, America’s Federal Trade Commission hit YouTube with a $170 million fine for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the largest fine in the act’s history.
The commission also fined the owners of social media videos app TikTok $5.7 million earlier this year for violating laws under the Act.
YouTube has since clamped down on search terms that bring up videos of young kids and has eliminated creeps’ abilities to post comments on them.
“Nothing is more important to us than ensuring the safety of young people on the platform,” Ms Wojcicki has previously said.
Before she was appointed head of YouTube in 2014, Ms Wojcicki was senior vice president of advertising and commerce at Google — the company which, instead of trying to compete with the popular video-sharing website, decided to buy it for $1.65 billion in 2006.
When she first joined Google in 1999, she became the company’s first marketing manager, later leading the initial development of highprofile projects such as Google Images and Google books.
New York Post