YouTube is one of the best – or worst – places for you to find people participating in the latest trends. Sometimes this involves challenges based on movies, others simply timeless mean-spirited pranks. YouTube has decided it doesn’t want to host any of those anymore.
A post on the Google Support site states that such challenges and pranks violates its policies on harmful or dangerous content. It’s even got an FAQ page to help people identify what kind of pranks are funny, and which crosses the line into life-threatening territory.
The video hosting platform is also giving YouTubers a two-month grace period to review this new guideline and make changes to content as necessary. Beyond that point, content that violates this new guideline will be removed.
From now on, it looks like people will have to be more careful with what sort of prank or challenge videos they upload on YouTube, lest their videos end up going the way of the Tide Pod challenge. And it’s probably for the better, as it may deter people from playing dangerous pranks or taking up unsafe challenges to begin with.
(Source: YouTube [1], [2]. Image: The Guardian)
