YouTube Safety Mode
© 2010 Google, Inc.
See also Youtube Kids. YouTube Safety Mode "is part of a long process of increasing the controls that we give you, so you can control what you see," said Scott Rubin, Head of Child Safety at YouTube. We tried it and found it to be moderately helpful, but it didn't keep out some pretty questionable content. Designed to be an opt-in feature, you can now force your browser to display YouTube with a filter turned on. The only way to turn it off is to login with your password, and deactivate the filter. Here's how to make it work. Step 1: Scroll to the bottom of any YouTube page. Step 2: Look on the bottom left, for the words "Safety Mode is Off." If you're currently logged on, you can lock it. Click on these words and then save, and then you're in Safety Mode. Step 3: To lock the Safety Mode preference, log into your Google account. Once you log out, your settings can't be changed without your password. So now that you've activated the account, what's different? There are no more text comments, by default. You can still get to them by expanding the comments menu, but any extreme language is blocked by default. In our tests, we found a lot of content to be unaffected by the filter, including a slow motion suicide bombing and a complete liposuction procedure. Clearly not "safe" by most people's definition. And, of course there's nothing preventing your tech-smart child from logging into a new account, or starting a new browser. Still, this is a feature that will actually filter the results to some extent. Perhaps we're looking for a "super safety" mode.
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