YouTube flooded with porn following discovery of bug

Heading to Youtube for all your explicit content needs isn’t usually the way to go but a recent bug on the website has led to NSFW content being uploaded in the hundreds.

Youtube is usually on the ball when it comes to taking down explicit content that shows up on its site. With everything from true crime videos to videos featuring hate speech being taken down or demonetised on a daily basis, the same is usually applied to anything that can be considered explicit or pornographic.

However, despite the tight restrictions, some users have found a way to bypass the rules which was discovered courtesy of an investigation by 404 Media’s Emanuel Maiberg. The report, titled ‘Youtube hackers’ details how some hackers were able to upload “undeletable” porn to their channels even after their channels were deleted.

“The person who claims to have originally discovered the exploit and explained how it works in a YouTube video has since had that video removed and says that YouTube has fixed the bug, but as I am typing this my second monitor is playing a very explicit hentai that’s been up on YouTube since at least September 21, posted by a YouTube channel that was “terminated” at least five days earlier”, Maiberg writes. “YouTube only removed this video after I sent it the link directly.”

To get this information, Maiberg infiltrated a group of ‘p**n hunters’ who spend their days finding and uploading explicit content to Youtube. One member of the group had found a way around the site’s restrictions and was able to throw off its moderation algorithms, stopping it from being able to detect the material. According to the hacker, you can do this by overloading Youtube’s tags section with special characters.

It wasn’t long before this method was shared with the rest of the group which led to Youtube being flooded with explicit content. Although most of it has been taken down at the time of writing this, there are some still floating around. “We’re aware that a small number of videos may have remained on YouTube following a channel termination,” a Google spokesperson said. “We’re working to fix this and remove the content from the platform.”

Some people just have to get their kicks somewhere, I guess.