Today, YouTube updated their settings on Restricted Mode, an optional feature that helps filter out more mature content from view for institutions like schools and libraries who want a more limited experience on YouTube. YouTube states that filters will not be based on attributes like gender, gender identity, political viewpoints, race, religion, or sexual orientation.
As YouTube explains on their Creator Blog:
It’s been a few weeks since we posted about Restricted Mode so we wanted to give everyone an update on where things are. Restricted Mode is designed to be an optional feature that helps filter out more mature content from view, so that institutions like schools and libraries as well as people who prefer a more limited experience would feel comfortable offering access to YouTube. We want to clarify that Restricted Mode should not filter out content belonging to individuals or groups based on certain attributes like gender, gender identity, political viewpoints, race, religion or sexual orientation.
What we’re fixing
Back in March, our community alerted us that our systems were not working as intended, in particular, that we were unintentionally filtering content from Restricted Mode that shouldn’t have been. After a thorough investigation, we started making several improvements to Restricted Mode. On the engineering side, we fixed an issue that was incorrectly filtering videos for this feature, and now 12 million additional videos of all types — including hundreds of thousands featuring LGBTQ+ content — are available in Restricted Mode.
