Lots of porn was 'hidden' on YouTube using Irish language titles

Pornographic films were left on YouTube for months because they were "hidden" under Irish language titles.

The videos, which had all been uploaded in October 2014, were discovered when the flatmate of Irish language journalist Maitiú Ó Coimín searched the site for "scannáin" - the Gaelic word for "film".

Ó Coimín, who published his findings on Irish language news site Tuairisc, told the BBC:

My flatmate is a media student in Galway who was looking up [the Irish word for film] on YouTube for a project.

I looked a bit further into it, and there were about 15 to 20 films of a questionable nature.

The accounts all have an Asian woman as a profile picture. These were real pornographic films.

• Maitiú Ó Coimín

According to the Irish Independent, after being made aware of the videos' existence, YouTube was "quick to take action" and removed all the content and suspended the accounts that uploaded them.

"YouTube's community guidelines clearly state that sexually explicit content is not allowed on our site," a spokesperson explained. "YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to determine whether they violate our community guidelines."

A search for "scannain" still seems to draw results for adult content, although the videos we found had English, Spanish and French titles and just had "scannain" as one of the tags.

These videos, although they had suggestive titles and thumbnails, actually turned out to be retro B-movies.

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