YouTube has updated its rules to explicitly ban dangerous pranks and challenges after a Bird Box blindfold challenge went viral.

In a detailed updated Faq, the platform said that it is explicitly banning the kinds of pranks that present a risk of serious danger or death. Also banned are pranks which make victims believe they’re in serious danger — i.e. a home invasion prank or a drive-by shooting prank — or ones that cause children to experience emotional distress.

Director Susanne Bier’s Netflix film Bird Box stars Sandra Bullock as a woman who joins two children in making her way through a dystopian setting along a river — all while blindfolded. In this postapocalyptic world, an ominous presence drives much of the world to suicide simply by looking at it.

In our social media-obsessed culture, the film inspired people to don blindfolds while attempting to do various tasks,...