Porn ads reappear on YouTube, despite Google's promises (Update: Statement)

Update, July 26, 2024 (04:29 AM ET): A YouTube spokesperson has shared with us the following statement:

We have strict policies against ads with sexually explicit content. When we find ads that violate this policy, we remove them. We have blocked these ads and suspended the account.

The statement fails to address why such ads keep passing through Google’s filters.

Original article, July 24, 2024 (11:02 AM ET): To put it bluntly, YouTube has a porn ads problem. For all the clamoring and pushing the company does to promote YouTube Premium to users who want to see no ads, there isn’t nearly enough being done to combat NSFW ads that show up for users who choose to live the ad-supported life. We’ve spotted porn ads on the platform several times in the past: twice eight months ago and once again earlier this month. Guess what? We’ve spotted another porn ad on YouTube, despite all of Google’s efforts and promises.

We’ve seen several reports about a sexually suggestive ad for an app called “Mitha.” Due to its suggestive nature, the ad can be easily classified as NSFW, so click on these reports at your own peril. We’re seeing complaints from Redditor RamanIndoria, Redditor Low_Beautiful969, and Anfz on X (formerly known as Twitter), but there’s a good chance that many more people have seen the ad.

When one of the affected users notified YouTube about the issue, the official social media handle replied that they were “looking into these ads” and that they’d “handle all the next steps from here.”

It is pretty embarrassing that porn and other NSFW-suggestive content has continued to exist on the platform. If you haven’t bumped into a porn ad yet, you can frequently find bots spamming the comments section of videos, like in the comments of this video.

Spokespersons have mentioned in the recent past that YouTube has a stringent policy against ads with sexually explicit content, that it removes ads that violate this policy, that it suspends several million advertiser accounts every year, and that it has deployed LLMs to remove many millions of ads. But clearly, there is room for the platform to do so much better.

Yes, YouTube operates on a gigantic scale. However, for a platform that is quick to demonetize any creator that strays away from its nudity or abuse guidelines (or any guidelines for that matter), YouTube doesn’t hold itself up to those same standards. It is quite perplexing that such ads and comments keep getting past Google’s filtering process on one of its prime businesses, and it forces us to reassess just how family-friendly the platform really is, despite its claims and reassurances.

We’ve reached out to Google (again) for comments on the matter, inquiring what the company has done more recently about YouTube’s porn ads problem. We’ll update this article when the company responds.