Are your kids watching these wildly inappropriate YouTube videos?

We’ve kept a close eye on YouTube and its problems with NSFW ads. Unfortunately, YouTube users have discovered apparent child-focused channels posting videos with some seriously inappropriate thumbnails and content.

A couple of Redditors spotted several purportedly child-friendly YouTube animation channels posting videos with adult thumbnails. We also get some inappropriate titles attached to these adult thumbnails. In fact, the first video in the screenshot below mentions an Islamic sermon.

It doesn’t take long to realize that some of these channels are all but posting porn-themed thumbnails. Some of these channels do feature NSFW content. However, the X Studio channel is easily the most serious offender here. In addition to adult-themed thumbnails, we get implied nudity, general sexual content, as well as characters being groped and sexually harassed.

The videos aren’t specifically marked as child-friendly content, but they aren’t age-restricted, either. That means anyone can see these clips on YouTube, even if they don’t have an account. Some of these characters also seem to be outright stolen from legitimate kids’ cartoons like The Amazing Digital Circus. Taken together, it’s clear these accounts and videos seem to be targeting kids, bringing to mind Elsagate.

We’ve asked YouTube for comment on the matter and will update the article as soon as it gets back to us. Nevertheless, the company previously defended the appearance of NSFW ads on its platform by claiming that it was heavily investing in measures to block offending ads. It also noted at the time that it was expanding the use of AI models to fight violating ads. That’s all well and good, and we’re sure policy enforcement is a cat-and-mouse game. But it definitely feels like the mouse is outsmarting the cat in this instance.