YouTube has deleted more than 270 accounts and over 150,000 videos amid a growing controversy about abusive child exploitation content on the platform, according to a report in Vice News.

You might recall that last month we reported on concerns from a large number of people that some videos aimed at children on YouTube featured disturbing themes and content. It seems that reporting from the New York Times and a viral post on Medium lit a fire under YouTube’s ass, and they sprang into action.

The big casualty of YouTube’s move was Toy Freaks, a channel with 8 million subscribers which featured a man named Daddy Freak (real name Greg Chism) and his two daughters. His videos were described as “borderline child abuse” by many commenters, and often featured his daughters appearing to be in great distress.

The Toy Freaks channel has been removed. In a statement to Variety, Chism said that Youtube had 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. 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.

YouTube has continued its rampage of deletion and comment blocking across a wide swathe of kid-targeted YouTube videos. According to Vice News, Adidas, Mars, Hewlett-Packard, and a number of other big brands have pulled ads from YouTube in the wake of reports that their content was appearing alongside disturbing videos and sexually explicit comments under videos of children.

Though many have accused child sexual predators of being behind the wave of disturbing content targeted at children, much of it comes down to basic incentives created by YouTube’s algorithm. Many videos which are not appropriate for kids are being targeted to them by unscrupulous content producers who abuse keywords and tags to get the widest reach possible.

It’s a huge question for YouTube, which has uneasily existed as both a massive ad revenue machine as well as a platform for free expression. Earlier this year there was controversy when brands found their ads running alongside videos containing hate speech – which led to the company revamping their content policy.

But for now this looks like the way they’re addressing it: a scorched earth attack on some of the most questionable content on the platform. Let’s see if it makes a difference.