San Francisco, Google-owned content sharing app YouTube has once again come under a cloud, this time for promoting white supremacy by letting a kids’ channel show racist content by portraying “beauty” and “ugly” looks in fair and dark skin shades, and failing to remove it despite reports.
In an episode of “Dina And The Prince Story” animated fairytale, the channel called My Pingu TV, that has over 700,000 subscribers, showed a “fair” angel falling in love with a human prince and deciding to give up her beauty to be able to talk to the human.
In the 13-minute video that has stirred the controversy, the angel transforms from a white, brown-haired cartoon into a black cartoon with curly hair, Independent.co.uk reported on Tuesday.
“I could not bear your pain any longer and now I am ugly,” the animated angel is heard saying upon her ‘transformation’.
The video has been watched more than 420,000 times and has collected 3,530 likes, 14,318 dislikes and over 2,500 comments on YouTube.
“Bad reports and five days later the video is still online in many languages. YouTube and team have no considerations for us. It’s a shame,” a user wrote.
“Definitely not letting my kids watch YouTube if it’s really out here brainwashing them to stand white supremacy,” another user wrote.
“This is very offensive. I couldn’t bear to think how my little mixed race granddaughter would feel if she saw this,” a comment read.
In order to get the episode pushed out of the platform, several people commented and urged others to report the video just like they have.
“Thousands of dislikes can also be thousands of flags/reports! Use your voice and make it heard! YouTube has to listen to reports!” a user added.
This is not the first time that YouTube has been called out for its failure in content filtering.
The controversy comes just days after Google reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over alleged violations of children’s data privacy laws on YouTube.
In February, the infamous and fatal “Momo Challenge” that culminates with self-harm or suicide of the player made its way into children’s programmes like Peppa Pig on YouTube.
The platform has previously faced a backlash from users as well as advertisers on accusations of not being careful with exposing minors to objectionable content.
