On Getting Kicked Off YouTube

Dr. Jennifer Weeks — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 18:21:22 +0000

Some of you who read my work might know I had a little YouTube channel. I posted videos about research updates, webinars about sexual offending, problematic sexual behavior and the podcasts I do. When I say little YouTube channel, I mean little. It had 261 subscribers and a decent number of views, but it wasn’t popular due to its niche content. Friday morning, I woke up to find out I’d been kicked off YouTube. They sent an unceremonious email saying they were deleting my channel because it was “Violating their policies.”

What policies you might ask? According to YouTube, the content on my channel was violating sexual content policies. In short, I was making adult content.

The irony is both frustrating and amusing. The algorithm, or whatever AI process they use, thought that my content, created to educate about problematic sexual behavior, keep children away from pornography and decrease the risk of sexual abuse is categorized the same as me making actual pornography.

Do you believe your sexual behaviors are compulsive or harmful to you or others? Then you should take the CSBD-19 free, validated self-assessment tool.

I am fairly sure I know which video got me banned.

I posted a short video about adult-themed video games. Things got squirrelly after that. I tried educating parents and others about their existence and for what to look out for.

Banning me from YouTube makes no difference to my business. It does make me ask a simple question:

If my content, functioning hopefully to decrease sexual abuse and sexual addiction, gets kicked off YouTube, as is many of my colleagues, where are we to do prevention work?

Kicked Off YouTube, For Educating People

Social media of any kind is the place to get the word out about anything. If prevention content that includes the words pornography, sexual abuse, or pedophilia is routinely banned, where, exactly, is the right place to do this work?

It makes logical sense to be doing this work on the platforms where teenagers are routinely being sent unsolicited penis pictures. It makes sense to do this work on the number one site that people go to for information, YouTube.

Learn why it’s important for everyone, especially teens, to be able to control their online experiences. Dick Pic Culture: How do Teenage Girls Navigate it?

Forgive my frustration.

Sometimes it feels as though the only place we can speak freely about these issues, CSAM, child sexual abuse, abuse prevention, is in our professional forums or conferences. While it’s nice for us to be able to share with colleagues, it’s a bit of an echo chamber. We already know what is going on. We are not the people who need to hear the messages.

As a result of my YouTube ban, we will be posting the videos on this site in the hopes of continuing the prevention effort.

Have you found yourself in legal trouble due to your sexual behavior? Seek assistance before the court mandates it, with Sexual Addiction Treatment Services.

Do you feel your sexual behavior, or that of someone you love, is out of control? Then you should consult with a professional.

The post On Getting Kicked Off YouTube first appeared on Dr. Jen's Recovery Readings.

A Quick Note About Our Assessments

Dr. Jennifer Weeks — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 15:02:06 +0000

If you’re a frequent visitor to my blog, you may have noticed that we’ve added psychological self-assessments. There’s somethings you should know about them:

They’re all free.
You’ll get a link to share your results with your therapist.
They’re anonymous. That comes with two caveats:
- If you don’t save your results link, I can’t retrieve it for you.
  - You’ll have to do the assessment again; thankfully they’re short and most people complete them in less than two minutes.
- Just because I don’t link your identity with what you do on your visit to my website, doesn’t mean your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or other companies/agencies in between aren’t seeing your visit here. I make a best effort to ensure your privacy, including using certificates and industry-standard TLS encryption, but you should still be cautious.

Are These Assessments Good?

Each of the assessments I’ve put on my site are validated self-assessments, but what does that mean?

Validation means that a tool, in this case these assessments, measures what it’s supposed to measure. For a tool to be considered validated, it must meet the following criteria:

Content validity – usefulness and relevance of each question to measuring the theoretical concept.
Construct validity – how well do the questions stay on-topic.
Predictive validity – the tool’s ability to predict future performance.
Internal validity – whether the tool adheres to basic cause-and-effect.
External validity – whether the tool can be generalized across various geographic, social, and economic demographics.

The self part of “validated self-assessment” means you can take these without a professional present. However, I do recommend you save the results link and share it with your therapist if your behaviors are causing you enough to concern to take the assessments.

Are you a professional looking to stay up-to-date with the latest information on, sex addiction, trauma, and mental health news and research? Or maybe you’re looking for continuing education courses?

Stay up-to-date with all of Dr. Jen’s work through her practice’s newsletter!

Sharing Results

To make these assessments more useful for you, the results page will provide a link you can copy and send to your therapist so you can parse your responses and probe further into the behavior that you find troubling. Beyond just the score at the end of each assessment, your response to each question will also be provided on the results page.

Please save the results link somewhere safe, as it cannot be retrieved for you since the assessment process is anonymous.

The Assessments

More details about each assessment are available on the Assessments page. If you’re unsure which assessment you should be taking, that should be your destination. If you know what behaviors brought you to my site, I’ve included direct links to each assessment below:

Psychosexual Evaluations
General Psychological Evaluations
- Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Questionnaire
- Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20)