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View all search resultsTobacco content raises alarm over children’s online safety
More than 2,300 videos uploaded to YouTube were found featuring tobacco products and advertisements, according to a report recently released by the Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet).
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Illustration of video sharing platform YouTube logo on its website. (Shutterstock/PixieMe)
O
nline content promoting tobacco products is widely accessible to underage users on video platform YouTube and may pose a threat to children’s digital safety, raising concerns over weak content moderation on the website, a recent report has suggested.
The report, released on Oct. 28 by the Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network (SAFEnet) and anti-tobacco coalition Free Net from Tobacco (FNFT), found 2,328 videos featuring tobacco promotions available for all audiences on videos uploaded to YouTube.
The monitoring, conducted between August and December 2023 and March and August 2024, revealed that 82 percent of the videos took the form of tobacco product reviews, tobacco-featured content, recommendations and usage tutorials. The most frequently promoted products were conventional cigarettes, followed by electronic cigarettes.
Some content appeared in videos about online gaming, a genre popular among children. Some of them included e-commerce links to purchase the promoted tobacco products.
These videos were flagged to YouTube for violating community guidelines. Around 70 percent of them were later put under a certain age restriction, with the remaining 11 percent removed by the platform and 4 percent taken down by the uploaders.
However, 25 percent of the flagged videos, or 355 videos, remain accessible to all users.
“Tobacco advertisements circulating on the internet not only promote products, but also a lifestyle,” SAFEnet executive director Nenden Sekar Arum said during the report launch on Oct. 28.
