They used to say encouraging, affirmative things to her, like how she’s wonderful or beautiful. But channels that focus on children with disabilities are bystanders in YouTube’s almost-blanket ban of comments under videos with minors.

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Social media companies are criticized every day for not doing enough. But when a YouTuber exposed pedophilic comments being made under wholesome videos of young children, Google deleted hundreds of channels and disabled the comments on “tens of millions of videos that include minors.”

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YouTube executives acknowledge that this near-term decision was going “above and beyond.” It’s counter to the service’s second lesson in the YouTube Creators Academy syllabus, which asks creators to “connect with your community” through comments.

“We’re giving people the platform to share their story and communicate whatever they want to communicate,” Ulmer said. “They share their story, and they see it’s met with warmth and love in the comments. They feel that confidence they lost a long time ago. With the comments gone, it takes away half our mission. It takes away that community.”

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Understanding that they’re dealing with a sensitive issue, Ulmer, his partner Alyssa Porter and another volunteer used to moderate the channel’s thousands of comments at least five hours a day. Ulmer and Porter say that although they’ve had their fair share of rude or discriminatory comments, they’re always deleted, and that they’ve never seen anything resembling sexual abuse.

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“I told YouTube, ‘If you show me that and you prove to me that’s a reality, I will accept this fate,’ ” Ulmer said, referring to the abusive comments. “They told us they don’t have access to that, only the higher ups do. I don’t believe it, and I’ve never seen these comments myself. It makes no sense.”

The Post asked YouTube why channels featuring children with disabilities are turned off, whether that was a human-driven decision, and why comments for other channels, such as Nickelodeon, BabiezTV and Kyoot, remain active. A YouTube spokesman responded with the same statement given to Ulmer and Porter, emphasizing that they focused on channels “at higher risk” or where a high incidence of sexually explicit comments were made.

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“We understand that comments are an important way creators build and connect with their audiences; we also know that this is the right thing to do to protect the YouTube community,” the spokesman said. “Our goal is to protect creators and the broader ecosystem while we improve our systems.”

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Nickelodeon moderates its YouTube comments and confirms that it does not have a previous agreement with YouTube as it pertains to its still-enabled comments on its channels, which all include family-safe original programming it creates and owns.

YouTube’s application of this new ban appears inconsistent. Adalia Rose, a YouTube star with 2.1 million subscribers, also had her comments turned off. She’s a 12-year-old girl with progeria, a genetic condition that causes a child’s body to age fast. However, another family vlog channel prominently featuring children on the autism spectrum still has its comments enabled.

“They won’t even address why videos with adults in them have comments affected,” since the channel often interviews adults, too, Porter said from her Florida home. “You’re not allowing us creators to have a conversation with you.”

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Ulmer’s dream project was to create a book written and illustrated by children with disabilities, hence the name of his channel. When he shopped the idea to publishers, he hit dead ends, so he started an interview series instead to take matters into his own hands. He and Porter started a Facebook page, which now has 2 million fans. But it was jumping to YouTube where they felt like they were reaching people.

“I really believed in YouTube as a platform. When we moved our channel and really began exploring it, it was one of the best things,” Porter said. “For the first time, we really feel like we had moved outside of our echo chamber and our channel is helping to model what inclusion and respect looks like.”

YouTube assures creators that comments won’t affect their videos’ placement in the recommendation algorithm, which faces separate and broad controversies. But comments remain an intrinsic part of the YouTube experience, where viewers can tag others to share the video.

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In the meantime, the pair have started a petition, which has more than 370,000 signatures. They’re still uploading videos to YouTube and other platforms. They even debuted a new introduction to each video, animated by special-needs children.

Well-meaning supporters have advised that they just move all their videos to their website, but Porter says staying on YouTube fits their mission for larger representation. For Ulmer, who jokes that he still hasn’t sold a single book despite the channel’s name, this issue has become an existential threat.

“Often, families would come to us with all these fears about how others would perceive them, but then they would see the thousands of comments giving reinforcement and positivity to these kids, and now it’s all gone,” said Ulmer, “I feel like I’ve had my purpose torn from me.”