In a statement provided to BuzzFeed News, a YouTube spokesperson said, “We take child safety extremely seriously and have clear policies against child endangerment.”
“We recently tightened the enforcement of these policies to tackle content featuring minors where we receive signals that cause concern,” the statement said. “It’s not always clear that the uploader of the content intends to break our rules, but we may still remove their videos to help protect viewers, uploaders and children. We’ve terminated the Toy Freaks channel for violation of our policies. We will be conducting a broader review of associated content in conjunction with expert Trusted Flaggers.”
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, Chism said he has been “working closely” with YouTube about the situation.
“On Nov 16, YouTube updated its Kids App and community guidelines to allow for stronger regulation and flagging ability for parents,” he said. “Later that day, three of our videos that we did not know were on the Kids App were flagged by the community resulting in the Toy Freaks channel being terminated.”
A spokesman for Chism told BuzzFeed News he had deleted his other channels himself as a precaution.
“With the concerns surrounding the Toy Freaks channel [Chism] thought it would be advisable to, at least in the meantime, take his other channels down,” he said.
In a statement to Variety, Chism said YouTube informed him “of concerns that my videos were attracting audience members who do not have childrens’ best interests in their hearts.”
“Victoria, Annabelle and I want to thank our supporters as my girls have had the opportunity to develop their creativity and self-confidence over the past few years,” he said. “Their future is bright. While it is disturbing to me that anyone would find inappropriate pleasure in our video skits, I deeply appreciate YouTube’s concerns for my family and I could not be happier with having had this remarkable experience.”
In an interview uploaded to YouTube in January 2015, Chism described himself as a single father of two girls, ages 4 and 6.
In another interview from that same year, Chism talked about the start of Toy Freaks.
“It was just family videos. I take videos with my kids and I post them up there, and just like home stuff, you know, playing in the living room, with toys and everything,” Chism said of the channel.
“I started seeing a pattern — these certain videos were getting more views than the others,” he said.
“So I focused on that, I analyzed each video, the description, the titles, the tags, everything involved in making that video and just what made these a success, and I tried to repeat it, and I’ve had some good luck with that,” Chism added.
In the interview he said that one of his videos had gone viral: “It’s kind of making me some money,” Chism said.
