One day after Thanksgiving in 2017, “a fresh wave of
advertisers suspended commercials on Youtube after their ads showed up next to
videos that appeared to attract pedophile viewers.”[1]
Youtube had removed ads from roughly 3 million videos, but the company’s use of
human and AI checkers simply could not keep pace with the number of uploaded
videos. Even so, Diageo, maker of Smirnoff and Johnnie Walker (alcohol drinks),
announced it would hold off its ads until “appropriate safeguards are in
place.”[2]
Mars and Adidas took a similar line. The question is whether those advertisers
were being fair to Youtube and even the producers of the videos.
After a similar revolt the previous March, YouTube and hired
more human reviewers and furnished advertisers with new tools to control where
their ads would appear. Did not those companies have some responsibility to
keep tabs on their ads, especially given the incentive to do so. “Advertisers don’t want their brands
associated with objectionable content and as well can face criticism if their
advertising money goes to support the videos’ creators.”[3]
It would not have been prudent to leave it to YouTube to review the ads,
especially if the advertisers knew that YouTube was short-staffed. Unlike the
advertisers, YouTube’s management had little incentive; the pull-out of certain
advertisers in March, 2017 had “little impact” on Alphabet’s (Google’s) overall
business. In fact record profits were posted.
Of course, the ability and will to review ads, whether by
the advertisers or YouTube, would not in itself have caught the cases in which
the videos themselves were salubrious and yet received unsavory comments from
viewers. An advertiser could hardly be blamed for placing an ad in such a
video; neither would YouTube be culpable in having permitted the video in the
first place. So even if sordid comments could be readily removed, the
incentives would be lacking. To be sure, YouTube is responsible for removing
such comments, and just because blame would not be justified concerning
innocent videos does not necessarily mean that such blame would not be exacted
anyway.
The nuances of responsibility suggest that the reaction of
the advertisers was rather blunt and even impulsive, and not entirely fair to
YouTube and the video-producers. Distinguishing between objectionable and
proper videos, and then between the latter and disgusting comments would be part
of a smarter, more refined approach.
