back to article YouTube blurs faces to protect the innocent

YouTube has launched a feature that blurs faces in videos uploaded to the site. In a blog post introducing the feature, the Google unit offers two use cases for the tool: "Whether you want to share sensitive protest footage without exposing the faces of the activists involved, or share the winning point in your 8-year-old’s …

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  1. Tom 35

    Do they

    Keep a clean copy for the cops? It would be too bad if the idiots who post videos of themselves doing something illegal can't get themselves arrested.

    1. LarsG
      Trollface

      Blurred videos? That about accounts for over 80% of the content.

  2. Khaptain Silver badge
    Unhappy

    What's next ?

    Will they also blur the faces of ugly, stupid people, short people , red heads, hairy armed people, people that wear green shirts. The list could go on forever.

    Society is becoming pathetic with its "lets protect the innocent" campaign. There is a point in time when the protection actually becomes a constraint for everyone else.

    I regret that there are no political parties that want to stand up and fight for a society without all this nanny state false protectionist shit.

    Politicians and law makers are becoming pathetic.........

    /rant

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Re: What's next ?

      Obviously the down vote was from some liberal left wing tree hugging bunny lover whom does nothing but "think of the children".

      You hit the nail on the head mate....Churchill would be turning in his grave right about now.

      Consider the balance redressed.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What's next ?

        Is this the same Churchill that sent the army in and is widely believed to have wanted to machine gun protesters? If video cameras were around then I'm sure the strikers would love to have filmed the army leaping off their trucks, baton charging and shown the results all over the world, without the risk of their identities being shown. Ahhh history and victors and all that.

        Now forward this almost a 100 years, we have the technology, and people in the likes of Syria want to get the news out to the world without risk of further retribution, but won't have the technology to blur faces.

        Still sit on you lardy arses and complain and whine pathetically about nanny states, whilst actually doing fuck all about it.

        It's like reading the Daily mail around here these days.

        Next week, how bi-weekly bin collections will bring the country to it's knees.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What's next ?

        >Obviously the down vote was from some liberal left wing tree hugging bunny lover whom does nothing but "think of the children".

        What a stupid comment. So you're saying that if someone witnesses an atrocity in somewhere like Damascus and has their smartphone handy then they should be banned from protecting their own identity or the identities of other witnesses?

        Such people are often vital in ensuring justice at international war tribunals. If they've been murdered then they can't exactly do this.

        P.S. "liberal left wing tree hugging bunny lover" - quite a few stupd cliches in that phrase. Along with the OP's "nanny state". You If you hadn't resorted to that crap you might have had some credibility in your argument.

        Anonymous - just to annoy you.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: What's next ?

          "P.S. "liberal left wing tree hugging bunny lover" - quite a few stupd cliches in that phrase. Along with the OP's "nanny state"."

          I think someone moved around the letters on his keyboard from DAILYMAIL to REGISTER*

          *Erm... and like added one...erm... somehow.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: What's next ?

          Doesn't annoy me, just highlights the fact you have no balls......OR tits, don't want to appear to be sexist...

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What's next ?

        "Obviously the down vote was from some liberal left wing tree hugging bunny lover whom does nothing but "think of the children"."

        Idiot comment.

        And what does being liberal or green have to do with 'thinking of the children'? Nothing.

        Stupid over-protective parents who think that by pathetically wailing at any perceived infinitesimal threat to child safety loudly enough everyone else will think that they are excellent, caring parents and hence validate them in life are the ones who say "Think of the children".

        Liberals - pretty much by definition - think it should be a parent's *choice* to film or not film their kids.

      4. Aaron Em

        Re: What's next ?

        I downvoted you for not knowing how 'whom' works but using it anyway.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What's next ?

      "Will they also blur the faces of ugly, stupid people, short people , red heads, hairy armed people, people that wear green shirts"...iOS users

  3. sabba
    FAIL

    If I were up to something naughty...

    ...I doubt I'd rely on Google's technology (Or anyone else's) to blur my face.

    I would how easy it would be to undo the blur effect (as that child molester found a couple of years ago - ok he used a twirl effect rather than a blur but there you go).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: If I were up to something naughty...

      Why blur when you can just blank it out completely?

    2. Aaron Em

      Re: If I were up to something naughty...

      Twirl's easier to reverse, though; it throws away less information than blurring does. Play with 'em in Photoshop, you'll see what I mean.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Awesome News!

    No I can stop smearing my face with Vaseline when my mates film me interfering with cat litter trays (or summink)

    1. Jon 83

      Re: Awesome News!

      No, you just have to shake your head from side to side really quickly.

      Its a proven anti-surveilance technique.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pedants' Corner

    Top marks to YouTube for putting that apostrophe in exactly the right place. Perhaps they should follow this face-blur thing by creating a tool that automatically corrects the apostrophes and grammar in YouTube comments?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pedants' Corner

      Its proven that missing apostrophes are 80% less annoying than surplus apostrophe's.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pedants' Corner

      > Top marks to YouTube for putting that apostrophe in exactly the right place. Perhaps they should follow this face-blur thing by creating a tool that automatically corrects the apostrophes and grammar in YouTube comments?

      They could start by disabling that feature that automatically adds 'lol' to the end of all YouTube comments.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Pedants' Corner

        How about this?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Pedants' Corner

        "They could start by disabling that feature that automatically adds 'lol' to the end of all YouTube comments."

        lol!

    3. Psyx
      Stop

      Re: Pedants' Corner

      "Perhaps they should follow this face-blur thing by creating a tool that automatically corrects the apostrophes and grammar in YouTube comments?"

      There is not enough computing power in the world to keep up with the morons on YouTube.

  6. Suburban Inmate
    Meh

    Re: "corrects the apostrophes and grammar "

    Doubt it. Processing 100 hours of Nyan Cat is one thing, but I reckon we're at least a decade of moores law from that sort of power...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "corrects the apostrophes and grammar "

      > ... but I reckon we're at least a decade of moores law ...

      Clearly El Reg haven't seen fit to deploy those resources on their own forums at any rate!!

      1. Amonynous

        Re: "corrects the apostrophes and grammar "

        > > ... but I reckon we're at least a decade of moores law ...

        > Clearly El Reg haven't seen fit to deploy those resources on their own forums at any rate!!

        lol

    2. Suburban Inmate
      Headmaster

      Re: "corrects the apostrophes and grammar "

      Moors' Lore <-- sorted!

      1. Aaron Em

        Moore slaw.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Err...

    It's the whole point of going to a public protest that you're publicly standing up for what you believe in?

    What would be the point of publicly protesting anonymously?

    1. mark 63 Silver badge
      WTF?

      Re: Err... public protest

      well AC - Atrocities, warcrimes and police brutality are not exclusively perpetrated at public protests

      Witness intimidation occurs at many many situations and at all levels from getting a kicking from the local thug in the pub fro 'grassing' to mass graves ordered from the very top.

    2. Graham Marsden
      Big Brother

      Re: What would be the point of publicly protesting anonymously?

      I don't know. Perhaps you could ask those who protested in the former Soviet Union or China or Syria or...

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Necessity in the modern world?

    I really don't agree with that. How is it a necessity exactly?

    1. HMB

      Re: Necessity in the modern world?

      It's because paedophiles didn't exist before the invention of the Internet, so in earlier times you were completely safe :P

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tech to blur the face untill the court orders the source without the tech being applied.

    Pointless!

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "(parents have also been banned from photographing junior surf lifesaving events after horridly deranged individuals thought it would be fun to snap kids in their swimming costumes)."

    If anyone thinks that this is wrong, your mind is sick and twisted!

    What? Should our olymiads be blurred out becuase they are wearing tight fitting sports wear?

    It's totally innocence and if you disagree its clearly because your mind is thinking that its more than just swim wear!

    SAD, OH SO SAD!

  11. Aaron Em

    "never letting your kids be photographed in a uniform of any sort"

    I confess I fail to understand this one. Swimming costume I can see, but, e.g., a soccer uniform like I used to wear when I was small? I mean, I don't like the idea of pedos taking "candid" snaps of kids in any case, but I'm not sure I see the motivation behind this specific warning. Someone with better insight want to clue me in?

    1. HMB

      Re: "never letting your kids be photographed in a uniform of any sort"

      Even better, I never let my kids leave the house without wearing masks, that way their faces never get seen or recorded by anyone. It's simply the next logical step.

      1. Aaron Em

        Re: "never letting your kids be photographed in a uniform of any sort"

        Don't mistake me; I'm not saying I disagree with it -- I don't understand it well enough to do either that or the converse, yet.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "never letting your kids be photographed in a uniform of any sort"

      The whole reason for the stringent guidelines around photographing kids isn't just to stop some paedo from getting his jollies off by viewing it on the Internet - as the Daily Mail-esque "world's gone mad" crowd here doubtlessly think - it's actually a sensible precaution to prevent giving out information that could potentially assist a predatory paedophile from contacting your child (online or off). If a potential predator knows your child's appearance and what school they go to (through identifying the uniform) it's one step closer to them being able to contact them via Facebook or whatever, possibly with some newly aquired knowledge on their interests or achievements (depending on the content of the video/photo).

      1. Aaron Em

        Re: "never letting your kids be photographed in a uniform of any sort"

        This, and especially the argument downthread about protecting children who've been removed from abusive homes, makes good sense to me. Thanks for explaining!

        (For the curious: Among my other clients is a sport organization who publish event registration lists on their website; a couple years back, for much the same reasons, we had to modify that code so that it wouldn't display any info on anyone under 14. We don't deal with event photos directly, though, so it hadn't occurred to me to think about them in the same sort of context.)

      2. Keith Williams
        WTF?

        Re: "never letting your kids be photographed in a uniform of any sort"

        Wouldn't it be better to simply not post the pics on the various social media sites?

        1. Aaron Em

          Re: "never letting your kids be photographed in a uniform of any sort"

          Sure, if you're the one who took the picture. If someone else did, it may not be up to you.

    3. disgruntled yank

      Re: "never letting your kids be photographed in a uniform of any sort"

      I thought it was a Buckingham Palace guideline to keep the royal youth from showing up in embarrassing armbands.

  12. thefutureboy

    Child Protection

    When I attended the child protection session of the Level 1 Football Coaching course, the question about child photographs obviously came up. One of the main reasons photos of children are not published, particularly with accompanying names, is to protect children who have been removed from abusive families and relocated to safer places.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Child Protection

      Yes, and as a kicker to that: Anyone who thinks paedophiles' photo collections are a bunch of kids in sports wear as seriously deluded.

      1. Aaron Em

        Re: Child Protection

        Well, judging by the "child model" websites I've heard about, I was guessing that was part of it -- although I'm sure that, just as you say, photos of kids in no wear probably form the majority.

    2. thefutureboy

      Re: Child Protection

      And I guess my previous post got three down votes for the use of the word 'football'? :-P

      1. Aaron Em

        Re: Child Protection

        Actually, given the frequent predilections of Anonymous and /b/tards in general, I strongly suspect the downvotes came about because there are some people around here who don't fancy the idea of children being removed from abusive homes. After all, somebody's got to keep up the flow of illicit imagery that 4chan loves so dearly...

        1. Graham Marsden
          Thumb Down

          Re: Child Protection

          "One of the main reasons photos of children are not published, particularly with accompanying names, is to protect children who have been removed from abusive families and relocated to safer places."

          No, that's just the *excuse* that's given to justify a stupid and over-bearing "cover your arse" policy brought in by people frightened of being sued by No Win, No Fee lawyers.

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

          2. Aaron Em

            Really, Marsden?

            You don't even realize you're a Christian. How come you know so much?

  13. mark 63 Silver badge
    Coat

    Michael Jackson

    Looks like like Jacko was streaks ahead of the game

    He was blurring his kids faces years ago

  14. GotThumbs
    Facepalm

    Chock one up for the criminals who post their stuipidity...opps fun activities

    This just makes it harder for the police to catch stupid criminals who love, Love, LOVE to self-promote their proud accomplishment of vandalism, rape, bullying, etc..

    More and more stupid people are breeding....now they have to be protected against themselves.

    There ARE alternatives to posting your child’s baseball game for the world to view.

    At a time that people want to maintain their privacy....more and more are displaying their a$$e$ more and more.

    This new sense of anonymity...will only increase the boldness and further display the level today’s society has truly sunken too.

    The recent Wal-Mart Smash Mob in Jacksonville Florida is a perfect example of how brilliant (Not!) Today’s youth are and how bad it's going to get.

  15. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "users will need to delete the pristine version in order to protect privacy"

    Well that about kills its usefulness then.

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