YouTube’s child predator comment controversy: all the latest updates

On Sunday, YouTuber Matt Watson sparked a major backlash against YouTube, when he posted a video describing how a “soft-core pedophilia ring” of child predators have been using YouTube’s recommendation algorithms to discover innocuous videos of children, and communicate with one another by posting predatory comments in YouTube’s comments section.

The response to Watson’s video has been swift as numerous companies, such as Epic Games, Disney, AT&T and others have pulled their ads from the platform, while YouTube has been racing to delete video channels and comments.

Watson’s essay was the latest to point out a long-running issue that the company has faced, and the company told The Verge that it was enforcing its policies “aggressively, reporting it to the relevant authorities, removing it from our platform and terminating accounts.”

The situation is still playing out for YouTube, its creators, and viewers: follow along for all of the updates.