To Filter or not to Filter YouTube Videos

A large percentage of employees in any organization use the internet for personal use during office hours. Their internet usage is mostly spread between YouTube, social media platforms and news sites. Of these, YouTube is by far the largest consumer of bandwidth.

YouTube is one of the largest online search engines on the internet – in fact it is second only to Google. Every day, over 5 billion videos are watched on the platform. What does this mean for an organization? Where should you draw the line when it comes to restricting YouTube content?

Why do you need to filter YouTube videos?

There are several ways in which operational workflow is disrupted due to a significant proportion of your employees spending time watching videos on YouTube. Especially with the newer generation of digital natives stepping into the workforce, the ramifications of unmoderated YouTube access are more pronounced. As a company, this could even result in the need to hire additional personnel to compensate for the loss of productivity. Here are a few ways in which unchecked YouTube access can harm your organization.

Reduction in efficiency

It is estimated that employees spend, on an average, one hour of their 9-5 workday browsing the internet. YouTube accounts for a considerable chunk of that time. If your company has around 20 employees, that amounts to a staggering 20 hours a day wasted on employees’ personal entertainment. On a weekly basis, that is 100 hours you can’t get back. If your organization is bigger, the problem scales as well.

While it can be argued that access to business-related YouTube channels can allow your employees to access solutions in a few minutes, YouTube is seen more like a leisurely and entertainment based “break”. Installing YouTube filter software can help to allow employees to access only whitelisted channels related to your business.

Load on internet bandwidth

The world is moving towards faster connectivity, and businesses which are faster to respond to their customers can deliver greater customer satisfaction. But the same high-speed internet is used by your employees use to browse YouTube too. This often amounts to several gigabytes of data, exhausting your internet bandwidth every month. Not only does this slow down your work communications, but assuming that you are billed on a monthly basis, imagine how much money can be saved by your company by reducing data consumption. Filtering YouTube videos can go a long way in reducing this burden.

Access to inappropriate content

YouTube comes with its fair share of shady content – pornography, religious extremism, and racial intolerance to name a few. Unmoderated access to a site with a large volume of such content can seriously dent the reputation of your organization. It can create moral conflicts between your employees on sexual harassment, religious or racial discrimination grounds. An office is no place to permit such activities.

The solution? A YouTube filter software!

With all this being said, it is crucial for companies to take a step towards controlling YouTube access on their networks. Akku from CloudNow Technologies comes with a highly effective YouTube Filtering feature which gives you control over what channels can be accessed by your employees and what cannot. Do contact us to know more.

Harnessing the Power of YouTube for your Institution

Many tools or resources we use come with both pros and cons depending on how we make use of them. YouTube is no different – in the scenario of a school or college, it can be a gamechanger if used effectively, or it can have a negative impact on work and productivity if misused.

As the most popular platform for accessing video content, YouTube is a major e-Learning resource, where it is possible to access content on almost any subject. It provides access to answers to queries and presents content visually, which tends to be faster and more effective for learning than reading.

YouTube has huge volumes of content and e-learning videos from different parts of the world by certified teachers and professors, all of which are accessible at no cost, offering a major benefit to institutes.

However, YouTube access is restricted in almost every educational institution, because of its potential negatives. One major concern of management is students accessing irrelevant content.

For example, if a student is trying to access any video from YouTube there is a high chance of him/her getting distracted by content from unrelated topics, leading to a loss in productivity and concentration.

YouTube itself provides a filtering solution to address this issue – YouTube’s Restricted mode. But even if YouTube is used in Restricted mode, irrelevant videos can be accessed if the user uses an incognito window or uses YouTube without signing in.

Therefore it is vital for both the institute and its students to provide access only to relevant videos from YouTube.

Most institutes block students from accessing unwanted websites through firewall settings. However, students from today’s generation are aware of loopholes by using a proxy server to access any sites they want, which does not serve the purpose of having the firewall in place.

So completely blocking access to YouTube is not the right solution, since this is also often not completely effective, and you will end up restricting access to the biggest learning platform for your students.

Instead, putting in place a YouTube Filtering mechanism, which can act as a firewall and give access only to relevant content from approved channels and categories on YouTube while denying access to irrelevant content is the optimal solution.

Leverage the power of YouTube for your institutions without worrying about the downside with the help of Akku’s YouTube Filtering.

To know how YouTube filtering works: https://www.akku.work/blog/youtube-usage-at-the-office-is-no-longer-a-worry/

YouTube Usage at the Office is No Longer a Worry!

Using YouTube at the office is often viewed negatively, both because of it results in heavy bandwidth consumption, and in reduced employee productivity. At the same time, YouTube is a huge digital library where it is possible to access content on almost any subject.

In today’s fast-moving business scenario, YouTube is one of the best platforms to enhance knowledge and skills. While lectures and training may tend to get boring, digital learning is a great way to build interest. YouTube has an enormous range of content from various categories.

Training and development is a department for which YouTube is an essential and effective resource. Trainers can train employees with e-learning videos from YouTube at no cost, and can also recommend videos related to their work and skills to help them perform better.

So completely blocking access to YouTube is not the right solution either, since you will end up restricting the biggest learning platform for your employees.

Providing access to or blocking YouTube tends to be viewed to be an all or nothing exercise – but there is a middle path. Implementing a YouTube filtering solution on your cloud can get you the best of both worlds.

What is YouTube Filtering?

YouTube Filtering is an interesting feature of select Identity and Access Management solutions, which can whitelist specific videos from YouTube based on categories and channels.

YouTube filtering restricts people from accessing irrelevant content on YouTube. Restricted and Moderate Restricted modes can also be activated using a YouTube filter – the Restricted mode helps to block all 18+ content from YouTube while the Moderate Restricted mode prevents employees from liking, commenting on or sharing videos.

How does it work?

YouTube Filtering works with the help of a proxy server which reads the metadata consisting of the channel name, category, channel ID, file name and so on.

For instance, when the user is searching for a video on YouTube, the proxy server will read the metadata to confirm whether the channel is whitelisted, based on which it displays the video. If the channel is not whitelisted, an error is displayed to the user that access to the video is not permitted.

Leverage the power of YouTube for your organization without worrying about the downside with Akku’s YouTube Filtering feature.