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OMG: Irish language used to hide porn on YouTube – Metro US
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OMG: Irish language used to hide porn on YouTube

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A group of YouTube users have managed to bypass the video-sharing website’s no sexually explicit content policy – by posting pornography under Irish language titles. Maitiú Ó Coimín, a journalist with Irish-language news service Tuairisc (“Report”), made the discovery after his after his flatmate, a media student, accidentally stumbled upon illicit movie when researching for a university project on YouTube using the keywords ‘scannán’ (“film”) and its plural ‘scannáin’. YouTube was unaware of the issue, but after the videos was flagged, it ”was quick to take action”, as a spokesperson for the site claims. “Perhaps it’s the most imaginative use of my language I have yet seen,” Ó Coimín told Metro.

How did you come around porn under the guise of Irish?

My flatmate is a media student, he was doing a work for college and was looking up short films on YouTube as part of that. Irish is our language so he naturally used Irish words in his search. He called me to show me what he had found. I thought it would be an interesting story for the paper so I looked a little closer, using words like “scannán” and “gnéas” (“film” and “sex,” – Ed.) and I found out more and wrote an article about it.

How many naughty movies did you find?

About 20 films on four separate YouTube channels. I can’t recall the names of the all the accounts but two were called “Soshonna Wheat” and “Agustin Whitman”. They each had view counts in the low hundreds which jumped slightly when we published the article, before they were taken down. Their content was mildly erotic while others showed graphic sexual acts.

What do you make of people using the Irish language to hide porn?

I think it is perhaps the most imaginative use of my language I have yet seen! Though I doubt the occurrence is peculiar to Gaeilge (Irish – Ed.). It would surprise me if there were not similar videos on YouTube hiding behind lesser-known languages like Scottish, Luxembourgish or Native American Tongues. I am glad the story has gotten such attention as it had raised global awareness of the existence of Gaeilge, which can only be good for us.

Have you received any “thanks” from the video-sharing website?

I have not received any communication from YouTube since the article was published and nor expect it. I imagine they deal with many instances of this kind.

Are you planning to battle porn on YouTube or any other video service in the future?

No, I have little interest in such an endeavor. I am a journalist whose primary concern is to provide the Irish-speaking world with news and information relevant to them. Should more videos appear on YouTube or any other site in the Irish language, I would take a keen interest in it and report about it, but other than that I won’t be trawling through the internet looking for porn!