Ask HN: Anyone else seeing porn images in YouTube ad preview images?
8 comments
From my experience working at an online community company, what you’re seeing is actually pretty normal. These days almost all image (and video) moderation goes through at least one round of automated review, often more.
The results then get routed into different buckets:
- Low‑risk content goes straight online, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely “free”; its reach is still constrained by ranking and recommendation logic.
Slightly higher‑risk content will go through another round of automated checks, and sometimes human review. Human moderation volume is very limited though, because it’s far more expensive than machines.
- Some known, pre‑flagged content in existing databases gets blocked outright. Items that need a second human or machine pass are also rolled into the training data for large models.
- Each platform has its own timelines and policies for this kind of post‑processing, but in terms of completeness and strictness, Chinese platforms are actually among the most rigorous.
The results then get routed into different buckets:
- Low‑risk content goes straight online, but that doesn’t mean it’s completely “free”; its reach is still constrained by ranking and recommendation logic.
Slightly higher‑risk content will go through another round of automated checks, and sometimes human review. Human moderation volume is very limited though, because it’s far more expensive than machines.
- Some known, pre‑flagged content in existing databases gets blocked outright. Items that need a second human or machine pass are also rolled into the training data for large models.
- Each platform has its own timelines and policies for this kind of post‑processing, but in terms of completeness and strictness, Chinese platforms are actually among the most rigorous.
It's been cracked down on, but I remember a year or so ago the actual thumbnail was a nude woman here and there. I'm guessing they implemented AI to reject things now.
This doesn’t surprise me too much. Ad preview pipelines are often very different from core content moderation systems.
Especially for thumbnails, there’s usually a mix of heuristics, delayed review, and tolerance for false negatives to avoid blocking legitimate ads. The edge cases tend to leak through first.
Especially for thumbnails, there’s usually a mix of heuristics, delayed review, and tolerance for false negatives to avoid blocking legitimate ads. The edge cases tend to leak through first.
Hunh. I found the "report this ad" link. But when I clicked it, it indicated the organization sponsoring the ad was some other company, not the one that was originally listed. Doesn't really make me think they know what's going on.
I've had nude images come through Facebook ads. Nothing surprises me. It's everywhere these days. Even if you use DNS filtering, stuff can slip through.
I'm getting AI girlfriend ads. It's not nude, but certainly sexual.
I get a lot of nip-slip, camel toe and provocative poses. This has been going on for a while now. I never log into the site and I have never search for this on YT. It's mostly in the YT shorts but uBlock rules to nuke the shorts keep breaking, I assume on purpose. Far worse are the AI slop videos. If I click on AI slop by mistake then I have to close the browser, run bleachbit and start over again or all I get is AI slop.
I only watch a handful of channels on YT. If they also uploaded to Rumble then I could finally block YT in uBlock once and for all. I say this knowing that once Rumble is half as popular all the sensual and AI crap will end up there too.
I only watch a handful of channels on YT. If they also uploaded to Rumble then I could finally block YT in uBlock once and for all. I say this knowing that once Rumble is half as popular all the sensual and AI crap will end up there too.
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So... a) yes, whoever you were, you were able to get porn past Alphabet censors, b) it's constructed in such a way with gaps and splotches that I could believe it would get past an AI filter, c) does Alphabet care about receiving reports of such things? I suspect their response would just be "thank you for bringing this to our attention. we make every effort to provide a positive environment for our users...", d) it does not, thankfully, appear to be child porn, e) it appeared as a still image attributed to Sv Plumbing.
Aside from the irony of salacious images slipping past a corporate behemoth claiming near infinite machine learning and human moderator powers, I'm vaguely interested in how this happened. If it can happen with porn, it can happen with any type of image. Perhaps nuclear secrets are being exfiltrated to North Korea and Iran by way of AdWords as we speak! (though I can think of easier ways to steal nuclear secrets.) Does this imply Alphabet is less about humans and more about AI these days?
Just curious.