YouTube is taking an ever-more aggressive approach on explicit content, quickly demonetizing videos with too many swear words and ruthlessly deleting sexually explicit ones. It’s understandable on a platform that needs to have good relationships with advertisers and that wants to have a family-friendly image. However, sometimes policies like this simply aren’t well thought out. Case in point,YouTube Musichas a disruptive viewer discretion warning for album covers, and then not even all problematic ones.
As spotted bya Redditor on r/YoutubeMusic, some of their favorite songs refuse to start playing on their Bluetooth headphones unless they accept a warning on their phone, telling them that the content might “contain suicide or self-harm topics.” Every song marked with this warning would stop the current queue from playing until the popup was acknowledged for them.
Other Redditors quickly chimed in to note that the same problem exists for them, with many of them pointing toRage Against the Machine’s self-titled albumas one that consistently shows the warning for every single song. It turns out that it’s likely the album cover that sparks the warning, which depicts a monk self-immolating in a protest against the Vietnam government during the Vietnam War.
There are many problems with this behavior. For one, there is no warning whatsoever when you just search for “Rage Against the Machine” and look at the self-titled album with the problematic album cover. It only stops you from playing any song on the album. For another, the warning also interrupts playback regardless of whether you’re looking at your YouTube Music app or not for the Redditor. You might not even see the offending album cover when a song from it starts. For us, the offending songs would simply be skipped in the queue, which is also bad, but not as disruptive as what’s happening to the Redditor. The best part probably is that the viewer discretion alert pops up on phoneswith part of the album cover visible behind it,making the popup’s existence moot in the first place.
On the YouTube Music web app, matters are even worse. When you select a song from the album in question, it appears like YouTube Music just refuses to play it altogether. Only when you extend the player with the arrow button at the bottom right of the interface will you see the viewer discretion popup, which you have to click or tap to continue. Depending on your window size, the popup might not even be fully visible.
On top of this, the warning appears to only show up for some depictions of violence, with Rage Against the Machine’s depicting a widely covered media event. An album cover that literally shows apainting of body parts in a blender(you’ve been warned before you click this) doesn’t throw up the warning — probably because this isn’t necessarily self-harm? But then again, a band that’s literally calledSuicide Commandoalso doesn’t throw up a warning upon playback, and neither do many other songs that talk about the topic of self-harm. Google’s approach to this popup is just straight up inconsistent, and throws up more questions than answers.
It also looks like there is no way to stop these popups from disappearing altogether. Even with Restricted Mode deactivated in YouTube Music’s settings, which is supposed to “help hide videos and songs with potentially mature content,” the warnings appear before playing songs from the affected album.
It’s unclear when exactly this issue first appeared, but some Redditors in the discussion suggest that it’s a known issue. Some have also already complained to Google’s support, which says that the content warning is working as intended. Personally, I used to listen to Rage Against the Machine a lot, and can’t recall seeing this popup before researching this story. However, it’s possible that I just haven’t happened to stumble upon the band’s first album for a while since I mostly listen to randomized playlists. Here, offending songs would simply be skipped, as mentioned before.
Meanwhile,Spoitfyplays the Rage Against the Machine album just fine. The same is true for music videos from the same album on YouTube itself, with songs like Bombtrack and Killing In the Name plaiyng for us without any warning.
If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741. Further resources are available atfindahelpline.com.
