YouTube has announced that it is banning videos depicting dangerous pranks, amid a flood of clips on the platform showing people inadvertently hurting themselves or others.
The video streaming site, owned by Google, updated its community guidelines this week in order to include a ban on so-called challenges that present “a risk of serious danger or death, and pranks that make victims believe they’re in serious physical danger, or cause children to experience severe emotional distress”.
“We don’t allow pranks that make victims believe they’re in serious physical danger - for example, a home invasion prank or a drive-by shooting prank,” continues a statement on the site’s FAQ section.
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This includes pranks where someone is tricked into thinking they are in severe danger, even if no real threat existed, the BBC adds.
Tech news site Android Central says the announcement comes after a teenager in Utah crashed a car while doing the “Bird Box Challenge”, which involves people undertaking everyday tasks while blindfolded.
Last year the “Fire Challenge” saw people putting flammable liquid on their bodies and then igniting it, while a “Tide Pod Challenge” involved participants biting or chewing laundry detergent pods, which contain bleach.
The challenges were taken on by some of the platform’s most popular content creators, with some of the resulting videos racking up millions of views.
YouTube pledged to crack down on harmful content last April, when the company said it would develop “better tools for detecting inappropriate and misleading metadata and thumbnails so we can take fast action against them”.
But a recent investigation by Buzzfeed found that dodgy videos showing graphic images of beastiality were still easily accessible on the platform.
Tech site Gizmodo suggest the platform’s moderation team is “overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content on it”, making regulation difficult.
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