Report: Google to Hire ‘Thousands’ of Human Moderators Following YouTube Abuse Video Controversy

Google is set to hire “thousands” of new human moderators following the revelation that its YouTube platform was allowing child abuse videos to stay online.

According to the Guardian, YouTube is set to “expand its total workforce to more than 10,000 people responsible for reviewing content that could violate its policies.”

“Human reviewers remain essential to both removing content and training machine learning systems because human judgment is critical to making contextualized decisions on content,” declared YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, who explained that “moderators have manually reviewed nearly 2m videos for violent extremist content since June, helping train machine-learning systems to identify similar footage in the future,” according to the news outlet.

The company was criticized in November after videos featuring children in “disturbing and abusive situations” were discovered with millions of views.

YouTube was embroiled in further controversy after channels targeted at young children featured inappropriate and even “disturbing” content, while at one point, YouTube’s search algorithm’s suggested “how to have s*x with your kids,” to users, prompting the company to introduce new guidelines.

“Many of the videos that slipped past the YouTube Kids filter were specifically aimed at younger audiences but featured unsettling moments of violence and often sexual content,” reported Breitbart News’ Lucas Nolan last month. “Many videos on YouTube featuring actual children are subject to sexual comments, another area that YouTube hopes to crack down on with the introduction of these new guidelines.”