YouTubers have profited from inappropriate videos of children – many of which attract sexual comments from perverts.
The videos feature child actors in uncomfortable and even abusive situations.
The site has recently stepped up its efforts to remove such content, but a new report claims ‘thousands’ of these clips are still up and running ads.
These ads are capable of generating vast sums for video creators.
For instance, a father of two made more than $100,000 (£75,000) in two months by posting videos of disturbing content involving his own children on YouTube on the ‘Ted’ channel.
The wildly popular Toy Freaks channel (pictured) featuring a single dad and his two daughters was also making up to $1.1 million (£820,000) per month before it was deleted in November
The ‘Ted’ channel uploaded videos of his children handling a diaper covered in fake faeces, being ‘scared’ by clowns and mock-wrestling.
The creator, whose real name remains unclear, had left a job with a six-figure salary to make these shocking videos, writes Buzzfeed, who did a full investigation on pulled YouTube channels.
Just three of Ted’s videos were deemed unsuitable, one was age-restricted and one was deleted.
The advertising on his channel has since been removed by YouTube.
There was ‘no communication, notification, [or] reason … and no way to appeal or request review’, Ted said.
This was part of a much larger crackdown on exploitative children’s videos being published on the platform.
Just in the last few weeks, YouTube has removed advertisements on more than two million videos and 50,000 channels.
Last month volunteer moderators revealed there could be as many as 100,000 predatory accounts leaving inappropriate comments on videos.
According to the BBC, some include the phone numbers of adults, or requests for videos to satisfy sexual fetishes.
One YouTuber, who called himself John, had hundreds of thousands of subscribers and told Buzzfeed News he relied on YouTube as his only source of income.
He showed a comment from one user who threatened to rape his child.
However, he said it did not make him want to leave the platform, where he could earn up to $24,000 (£18,000).
‘For every nasty comment, we get 1,000 nice comments,’ he said.
Chism’s channel, which features his daughters Annabelle and Victoria, appears to have been caught up in a broader purge targeting a wave of strange and inappropriate kids videos
Creators claim to be frustrated that YouTube is withdrawing exploitative content it had previously facilitated and profited from.
The Toy Freaks YouTube channel was founded by landscaper Greg Chism of Granite City, Illinois, and had 8.53 million subscribers.
The channel had had its videos pulled as part of the crack-down.
It was among the 100 most-viewed YouTube channels, and was probably making between $69,000 (£52,000) to $1.1 million (£820,000) per month, according to estimates by Social Blade, which tracks YouTube Channel Statistics.
Of this, YouTube would have been taking a 45 per cent cut.
Though it’s unclear what exact policy the channel violated, the videos showed the girls in unusual situations that often involved gross-out food play and simulated vomiting.
The channel invented the ‘bad baby’ genre, and some videos showed the girls pretending to urinate on each other or fishing pacifiers out of the toilet.
Chism is seen with his two daughters Annabelle and Victoria in one of the Toy Freaks videos. It was one of the videos also pulled as part of the crack-down
Just a few months before getting banned, Mr Chism was rewarded by YouTube and received YouTube Gold play buttons for his channel.
This allowed him ‘access exclusive events, get your very own partner manager, and claim your spot in the Creator Hall of Fame.’
Many of these families were relying on the YouTube videos as their only source of income.
A shocking investigation last month revealed that YouTube’s system for reporting sexual comments on children’s videos has not been working for more than a year.
‘There are loads of things YouTube could be doing to reduce this sort of activity, fixing the reporting system to start with’, an anonymous flagger said.
They estimated there were ‘between 50,000 to 100,000 active predatory accounts still on the platform’.
‘YouTube blames it on these people that were doing it, but for a year their algorithm pushed this content,’ said Davey Orgill, who left his job to run the channel ‘Kids Try’ which features parody superhero videos.
‘People were doing it because it was creating millions and millions and millions of views. They created a monster’, he said.
Toy Freaks appears to have started out innocently enough, and evolved toward creepier fare through Mr Chism’s expert optimisation and tweaking for views
Mr Orgill stopped making parody videos after a year and the channel was shut down.
‘What YouTube is basically doing is ignoring it until they can’t,’ Social Blade CEO Danny Fratella told BuzzFeed News.
‘I think that once it got enough media traction they kind of had to do something.
‘YouTube has been favouring advertisers over creators recently and the advertisers got nervous and that’s the catalyst that drives the platform to take videos down.’
Many channels were taking advantage of trends that YouTube now considers unsafe.
YouTube told MailOnline they did not have a comment to share at this time.
At the end of last month Lidl, Mars, Adidas, Cadbury maker Mondelez, Diageo and other big companies pulled advertising from YouTube.
The investigation found the video sharing site was showing clips of scantily clad children alongside the ads of major brands.
Comments from hundreds of paedophiles were posted alongside the images, which appeared to have been uploaded by the children themselves, according to an investigation.
One video of a pre-teenage girl in a nightie drew 6.5 million views.