Severe "pranking" or child abuse by parents on youtube?

[repoman]

For the past two months there has been some issues with sponsors on youtube pulling out because of extremist and bigoted content channels at the worst. But now there is content that is going into child abuse. The channel apparently had about 700k subscribers. I had never heard about it.


This is a story that broke in a big way last week when Philip DeFranco, a surprisingly level headed youtube news/infotainment commentator, talked about the channel.

This is Defranco's video"


The video below is a meta commentary about this abuse as prank channel, from the guy who lit the flames to gamergate, ironically.



What responsibility does youtube have for this or not striking some of the videos down? Will this be used as a truncheon against youtube's mostly free for all methods? Should youtube ever tell content makers "hey, this is going too far for these exact reasons"? It seems like youtube does not want to be involved that much, it could bring liability.

Being able to have so many people peer into a screwed up family and egg them on is something this new technology has allowed.

Youtube prank channels in general are mostly social cancer. There are some good legit pranks, but the fake, ridiculous ones swamp out standard good natured ones.

 

[repoman]

no one responded, but I will add some more info.

So the two youngest kids have been given to their mother for now:
https://patch.com/maryland/rockville/youtube-prank-parents-lose-custody-children-report


This video has much more of the violence and abuse than the other videos. Sickening. The intro is a bit long...



The video maker is saying that Mike Martin has been charged with domestic violence, and is due to appear in court May 5th.

 

[Arctish]

I don't have a fast connection at the moment so I haven't seen the videos, but I did find this report that describes some of the "pranks" the parents posted on YouTube:

Popular YouTube personality Phillip DeFranco, who has over 5 million subscribers, was among the many YouTube personalities who called out Martin. He talked about DaddyOFive in at least four videos. In one video, DeFranco points out a particularly disturbing prank Martin and Heather pulled on Cody. You can see the video re-posted by another YouTube user below.

In the video, the parents poured invisible ink on his floor to convince Cody that he ruined his bedroom. At first, it seems innocent, but it turns disturbing almost immediately. Heather yells, “What the f**k did you do?” Martin yells, “What the hell” repeatedly. Cody insists that he didn’t do it and is almost instantly brought to tears.

Cody is 9 years old.