Typing ‘How To Have’ In The YouTube Search Bar Apparently Returns A Very Disturbing Autofill Result
Typing “how to have” into the YouTube search bar apparently turned out some disturbing autofill results for a number of people.
This weekend, some people using the video-sharing site discovered that when they started to type that phrase into the search bar, it came back with a slew of suggestions including one that apparently made a reference to child abuse.
A series of screenshots from the YouTube search shared on social media showed that after typing “how to have” they saw a suggestion of “have s * x with your kids.”
The disturbing search result comes just a week after YouTube vowed to crack down on exploitative videos targeting young children. Many viewers had complained about a slew of cartoon videos featuring characters popular with young children — like Spider-Man and Elsa from the movie Frozen — in disturbing scenes. Some videos showed the characters eating feces and drinking urine, getting poked with hypodermic needles, or committing suicide.
These videos were often hidden among actual children’s videos, sometimes causing them to play automatically when children were watching videos their parents thought to be appropriate.
After a number of news stories highlighted these videos, YouTube announced that it was taking action.
“In recent months, we’ve noticed a growing trend around content on YouTube that attempts to pass as family-friendly, but is clearly not,” wrote Johanna Wright, YouTube’s vice president of product management, in a blog post last week. “While some of these videos may be suitable for adults, others are completely unacceptable, so we are working to remove them from YouTube. ”
Wright noted that YouTube removed close to 50 channels and deleted thousands of videos that exploited children, Quartz reported.
But the response drew criticism from those who believe that YouTube waited too long to address the problem. There had been reports dating back months identifying the disturbing videos, but YouTube still did not take any steps to remove them.
And many noted that the “how to have” search on YouTube appeared to return videos that appeared exploitative.
Not only does @YouTube autocomplete "how to have" to "how to have s*x with your kids" – this is the kind of stuff you get if you click on the autocompleted search term. Sick! pic.twitter.com/EbmT0HwEVW
— Stefan Molyneux, MA (@StefanMolyneux) November 26, 2017
It is not clear what caused some people to see “how to have s * x with your kids” in the search bar, or whether YouTube is aware of the apparent problem. The search results also did not show up for all of those using the site, though it was not clear if YouTube moved to strike the search suggestion or whether it was only showing up sporadically. The website has not yet addressed the strange search results.
[Featured Image by contrastaddict/iStock]
