YouTube saves dumb children from offensive content

YouTube has announced an optional feature designed to protect your dumb and impressionable kids from viewing sexual content, graphic violence, and salty comments on the website.

The new "Safety Mode" setting helps scour potentially objectionable content from YouTube that might not be nixed under its community guidelines, such as war coverage or a newsworthy video that contains violence.

In addition to filtering videos, the feature will also collapse user comments by default and censor curse words behind a veil of innocuous asterisks.

To activate the parental screen, go to the bottom of any YouTube page and click the link that says "safety mode is off." (Note: the feature is still being rolled out, and may not be available immediately.) Once activated, click save.

YouTube said safety mode can also be locked onto a browser with a YouTube account password so children can't slip past safety mode by logging off. (But of course, any reasonably sapient child may still weasel their way through by simply clearing the browser cookies, or using a different browser entirely).

Indeed, YouTube admits that "no filter is 100% perfect," but it's content that safety mode is another step in its desire to provide greater control of what our poor eyes are subjected to on the website. ®