YouTube has a huge user community, making it a great place to post your "YouTube poop" remixes and dramatic gopher clips. But that huge community, coupled with a lack of upload supervision, means that YouTube is also a great place to stick free video advertisements for porn sites, strippers, and other content you might not want your six year-old stumbling across. To address the issue, YouTube has rolled out new standards for so-called "mature" content, most of which appears to be anything but.
Content that features actual clips of pornography is generally flagged by users and pulled from the site; tamer fare may require users to log in and at least claim to be over 18. But if the video contains no nudity, it may survive in the wild, even when it's advertising (in quite graphic terms) strong sexual content.
The new guidelines change the definition of "sexually suggestive" content on the site. "Videos with sexually suggestive (but not prohibited) content will be age-restricted," YouTube noted in its announcement, "which means they'll be available only to viewers who are 18 or older."
In addition to nudity, the guidelines cover "videos featuring individuals in minimal or revealing clothing [which] may also be age-restricted if they're intended to elicit a sexual response." Reviewers will also consider "whether breasts, buttocks, or genitals (clothed or unclothed) are the focal point of the video," "whether the subject's actions in the video suggests a willingness to engage in sexual activity (e.g. kissing, provocative dancing, fondling)" and "if a subject is minimally clothed, whether the clothing would be acceptable in appropriate public contexts (e.g. swimwear vs. underwear)."
"What? I'm fully clothed!"
