Harder, Fasta! The videos have been removed and the users’ accounts have been suspended.
YouTube has moved to take down pornographic videos after it was discovered that some users had disguised them by giving them Irish language titles.
Until last week, anyone who searched for the Irish word for film would have presented with a series of explicit videos.
The issue was highlighted by Maitíú Ó Coimín, who is a journalist with the Irish language website Tuairisc.
“My flatmate is a media student in Galway who was looking up [the Irish word for film] on YouTube for a project,” he said.
“I looked a bit further into it, and there were about 15 to 20 films of a questionable nature.”
The films were uploaded by four different accounts that were all registered on the same day last October, he said.
“The accounts all have an Asian woman as a profile picture,” he said.
“These were real pornographic films.”
The phrasing of the videos’ descriptions suggests that the account holders were not Irish speakers but used an online translation tool.
A YouTube spokesperson said when the issue was flagged, “our team was quick to take action”.
“YouTube’s community guidelines clearly state that sexually explicit content is not allowed on our site. We remove videos and channels that violate our policies when flagged for our attention.
“YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to determine whether they violate our community guidelines.”
