Epic pauses YouTube ads after video exposes a “wormhole” of disturbing content featuring kids

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Yesterday, a video released that showed just how easy it was to get sucked into a “wormhole” of videos featuring children accompanied by endless amounts of terrible, disgusting, creepy comments. The video highlights this “network of paedophiles”  and on top of that, the fact that many of these videos are still being monetized.

It’s not clear who is uploading the videos, it is probably a combination of innocent kids and terrible adults, but these videos have hundreds of thousands of views (some in the millions), with comments that highlight sections for other sick fucks to watch, as well as invitations for WhatsApp and Kik groups.

These videos also feature pre-rolled ads

On top of everything mentioned above, many of these videos also feature ads on them, meaning YouTube is making money off these lower-than-life humans who are bringing countless hits to these videos. And we’re not talking random, small companies, no, we’re talking Epic Games (Fortnite), Grammarly, and L’Oreal to name a view.

Companies are not happy about this either, as Wired reports. Grammarly has stated its working with its ad agency to find out how and why its ads are being featured on these videos.

Epic Games went a step farther, pausing all its ads on the platform until an explanation is given and a conclusion is reached. From the Wired report Epic states, “Through our advertising agency, we have reached out to YouTube to determine actions they’ll take to eliminate this type of content from their service.”

YouTube has been working to fix these issues since 2017, but obviously, more work still needs to be done. Hopefully, more companies follow Epic’s lead, as the only way to teach these companies a lesson is to hit them where it hurts, in their wallets.

What do you think? Is Epic doing the right thing? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Josiah Motley

Former KnowTechie editor.