Buzz Watch: Sin No Longer In At YouTube

Authored by Paul Sweeting on December 2, 2008 - 12:03pm.

It was destined to happen anyway, and might be for the best in the long run, but it's still sort of sad to see the day finally come: The grownups are taking over YouTube. In a post on its main corporate blog, the popular video sharing site said it is cracking down on hanky-panky. Henceforth, the site will impose "stricter standards" for what qualifies as "sexually suggestive" material subject to age-restricted viewing. Further, videos containing "sexually suggestive" content or "profanity" will be "algorithmically demoted" on the Most Viewed, Top Favorites and other browse pages, which sounds a bit like some kind of CIA euphemism for being taken to a back alley and pummeled with sticks.

As for what constitutes "sexually suggestive" content now to be subject to such enhanced interrogation techniques, YouTube offers some handy guidelines. Apart from the obvious, additional considerations include:

Whether breasts, buttocks, or genitals (clothed or unclothed) are the focal point* of the video.
Whether the video setting is sexually suggestive (e.g. a location generally associated with sexual activity, such as a bed);
Whether the subject is depicted in a pose that is intended to sexually arouse the viewer;
Whether the subject's actions in the video suggests a willingness to engage in sexual activity (e.g. kissing, provocative dancing, fondling); and
If a subject is minimally clothed, whether the clothing would be acceptable in appropriate public contexts (e.g. swimwear vs. underwear).

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The new YouTube Comstockery comes as Google earnestly tries to make the site built on amateur creativity safe for professionally produced--more easily monetized--content of the sort that seems to be drawing so many eyeballs to Hulu.com.

The company has already rolled out a content identification and filtering system to try to tamp down the amount of unlicensed copyrighted material posted by users. And last month, it announced that henceforth, all videos would be displayed in the more professional-looking 16:9 aspect ratio instead of the old 4:3.

Et tu, Tubé? Et tu?

Paul Sweeting is the Editor of Content Agenda, a business-to-business brand dedicated to the nexus of content, technology and business. This piece was originally published on Paul's blog "Media Wonk" on Content Agenda and is posted on DMW with the author's permission.

Image by PSantaRosa