
YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children - artsandsci
https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/9/16629788/youtube-kids-distrubing-inappropriate-flag-age-restrict
======
sbjustin
We used to let our 3 y/o watch youtube. She learned lots of things from there
which was amazing. Colors, Numbers, the alphabet; all by the time she was 2.
I'm not a teacher by any means so it was awesome to see this happen.

Then these weird videos started showing up. We took youtube away for exactly
these videos that are mentioned in this link.

These are targeting children and it's sick.

~~~
ashark
> We used to let our 3 y/o watch youtube. She learned lots of things from
> there which was amazing. Colors, Numbers, the alphabet; all by the time she
> was 2. I'm not a teacher by any means so it was awesome to see this happen.

It's entirely possible the videos made this happen, or at least helped, but
some kids just develop that stuff crazy-early. My daughter saw little video
content before age two, and very little Youtube, but achieved all the same in
the same timeframe with only basic work on our part. It was natural for
her—she broke a 200-word working vocabulary by 14 months, could already count
sets of things under ten, could name most letters of the alphabet, and so on.
By age 2 she sounded like your average 4-year-old. Youtube had nothing to do
with it, and we _barely_ had anything to do with it. That was just her.

My son, on the other hand...

~~~
WalterBright
I recall some research that showed that very young children did not pick up
language from watching TV. It required an adult to closely interact with the
child to learn language.

~~~
bberrry
That's complete bunk. I was fluent in English by the age of 7-8 entirely from
having watched a ton of TCC (a British kids channel) on my own. I'm sure adult
aid helps, but it is in no way necessary.

I'm from Sweden btw

~~~
ejstronge
I think the original comment applies to one’s first language, as opposed to
later languages

~~~
WalterBright
That's right, and also to very young children, like 2-4. 7-8 year olds are
very different.

Many Europeans told me they learned English from watching TV as children.

------
jimmaswell
There's a subreddit about this called /r/ElsaGate. Some of them feel there's a
more sinister meaning to some of the content of these strange videos, like
here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/comments/6t754b/thank_you/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/comments/6t754b/thank_you/)

~~~
bitwize
Wow, sheesh. That's terrifying, but it makes a whole lot more sense than my
pet theory, was that the videos were screening tools for state actors. They
would seed YouTube with videos of beloved characters undergoing suffering and
violence, and then use analytics to determine who kept watching. The kids who
got squicked out would be collateral damage, but the ones who kept watching
would be identified as potentially useful psychopaths, and approached to be
recruited into black-ops assassination programs from an early age.

To be honest I'm not sure what's worse -- that or the child molester angle.

~~~
fletom
It sounds to me like your perspective may be skewed by having watched too many
Hollywood action movies.

~~~
bitwize
Or read too many HN stories about Russian agents of influence.

------
tmaly
What I find interesting is when you have parental controls on, and your
playing a kids video, the advertisements are not something a kid should be
shown.

~~~
richmarr
It reminds me of the surprisingly-high proportion of content available without
subtitles/captions. It's 2017 and plenty of people are deaf, and yet the BBC,
Netflix, Amazon, etc. regularly pretend this section of their audience doesn't
exist.

My guess is that is an instance of poor diversity within the team that set the
early direction for YouTube. Maybe a team with a higher proportion of parents
respresented might have made different decisions.

~~~
leggomylibro
I'm not sure what you mean? Netflix got sued for not following the ADA over
that exact issue, and it looks like they came into compliance years ago after
settling and landing on a captioning framework with the National Association
for the Deaf.

[http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/11/tech/web/netflix-subtitles-
set...](http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/11/tech/web/netflix-subtitles-
settlement/index.html)

~~~
MichaelGG
I regularly find stuff on Netflix that is only subtitled in a language not
spoken in the movie. It's very frustrating. Combined with Netflix's
increasingly shitty catalog and I'm sure I should cancel.

------
mattbeckman
Also, in case you glazed over the link to the recent Medium article, here it
is:

[https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-
in...](https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-
internet-c39c471271d2)

I read it last night after the wife recommended it ... and wow.

~~~
Bromskloss
The article seems to never get to the point. What was the disturbing thing?

~~~
crooked-v
Three main things:

\- Surrealist gibberish videos made with cheap render assets that feature
whatever will show up in kids’ content search (thus a predominance of Marvel
and Disney characters)

\- Gross-out and violent troll videos that imitate the surrealist gibberish
videos well enough for the algorithms to think they’re kids’ content

\- Live-action content that tends to include borderline child abuse in the
name of “funny” content (for example, children vomiting or visibly in pain)

~~~
donatj
I work for an online reading platform. Our number one kids books are mostly
about bugs, poop, and bugs that eat poop, followed closely by murder
investigation.

Kids love things that make them slightly uncomfortable. A feeling they get a
lot more often than adults. A feeling most adults avoid.

~~~
musage
These videos are not that. Some quotes from
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/) which
fit what I saw so far:

> _Adult themes repeat themselves throughout these videos. They 're subtle,
> and require interpretation which makes our analysis vague, but they are too
> pervasive amongst videos of different channels, countries of origin, and
> even advertised content that I cannot help but suspect a correlation.
> :Imagery of fear and life-threatening circumstances. :Medical play, roleplay
> or real, involving pregnancy and needles. :Ideas of dominance and power,
> submission. :Magic, wands, spells being used negatively on others. :Acting
> on an unconscious party, non-consent. :Visual innuendos and gags and even
> inappropriate touching. :Naughtiness and misbehavior conducted in secret.
> :Showers and bathroom imagery. :Colored plastic balls! In every video,
> regardless of content. :Kids eating inordinate amounts of things for no
> reason._

and

> _I am 20 with no children but am definitely a scared soccer mom at this
> point. Having first hand experience with being a Kid On Youtube and now
> being an Adult With Trauma, I think a lot of people aren 't thinking about
> the severity of the effects of these videos on children, and I'm thinking
> that's probably because a lot of people in this sub are older and didn't get
> to experience being a kid on youtube w little/no parental supervision._

> _Tons of people are saying "well, I saw porn as a kid, and im fine." That
> isn't the point! The point is /all of this is already kid targeted/. Seeing
> porn as a kid on my own accord/exploration did nothing bad to me for the
> most part. Seeing screamers on kids videos, as a kid? Totally fucked me up.
> Seeing early-stage elsagate-esque videos as a kid? Not so much, but that's
> only my experience, and the technology to make videos like this wasn't
> really available yet. The long term effects are serious and traumatizing and
> there's more to do w the issue than just "well, its BAD PARENTING" (or,
> alternatively, people saying the kids watching these videos are "just bad
> kids". also, not all parents care about being bad parents. just throwing
> that out there.) Youtube provides a direct service of "you want to hurt
> kids? well, heres your platform." and it's always been like that. even when
> youtube wasnt that big. people have been reporting kid-targeted screamers
> for yearssssssssss and nothing gets taken down. and there are people that
> want to make this content. that is /incredibly scary/ and exploitable, even
> if these videos are just a case of "AI gone rogue"._

and

> _I watched those Elsa, Spider-Man, The Joker and Maleficent videos for over
> 4 hours and I lost count how many had steady themes of kidnapping there
> were, normalizing being tied up and injected with REAL SYRINGES. One
> especially disturbing video showed a live girl no older than 6 being held
> down against physical discomfort while a blurred out syringe seemingly
> penetrated her butt while she lay on her stomach. Mind you all of this is
> taking place while cheery music is being played couple with laughter and the
> actual live screaming of the child present in many of the videos._

Spend one hour watching skipping around in videos (it's not like you would be
able to refrain from skipping anyway, and if you can go one hour you can
stomach a lot more than I can, and that's from someone who saw people getting
sliced up on stileproject in 2000). Then do some very superficial math. _Then_
see if you just want to shrug it off.

------
majos
What I found especially interesting in the Medium post that (it seems) spurred
this is the suggestion that algorithmically-generated content seems very
easily to become nightmarish without any malicious intent.

It makes sense to me that systems which randomly throw things out and react to
clicks of kids with not much superego quickly fall into dream-logic. Isn't
this roughly the canonical explanation for how dreams work anyway?

~~~
wickawic
I did this intentionally recently by only listening to spotify’s discovery
playlist for a few weeks in a row. I started out with some r&b and electronic
music, and ended up weeks later with a playlist of bland, uninspired rock
music, apparently the fixed point of my discover playlist adventures.

I wonder if the result would be different had I started out with different
preferences, or if The Algorithm pushes everyone to the same place (cheap
music for Spotify)

~~~
kerbalspacepro
It would be different if you started out with different preferences (note: all
new rock music is uninspired rock music, and Discover Weekly pushes newer
music).

------
cowpig
I don't believe in this kind of censorship and that medium article just reads
like a bunch of alarmist nonsense to me.

I was exposed to tons of super-weird stuff on TV an the internet (adult swim,
fat-pie, etc) and so were most of my friends growing up. I don't think it was
problematic for any of us.

When you're a kid and something feels disturbing, you turn it off. Our society
really doesn't give kids any credit for being autonomous and resilient.

Most of all, I don't like that one corporation has the power to "crack down"
on a whim about what's appropriate for kids to watch on a global scale.

~~~
hbosch
It's one thing when you discovered porn in the 90's at the age of 12, versus
being 5 years old and watching Spiderman rape & murder Elsa.

~~~
joering2
I'm sorry, but how is that difference?

Unless I take you wrong, do you claim that a child that watch cartonish
spiderman forcing himself on Elsa, will end up child molesters or murderers
themselves, then I would love to see some statistics, other that the fact your
argument sounds reasonable on its face.

~~~
cisanti
I don't know about rapists and murderers, but very young kids have started to
rub against each other and according to my kindergarten teacher, it has
exploded and happens a lot more than before. Anecdotal evidence, but if you
believe her it doesn't only happen in that specific place. Spiderman shagging
Elsa or playing with her tits certainly doesn't make the problem letter.

------
pupppet
>After that, there is a team of humans that review videos which have been
flagged.

The last line of defence is depending on toddlers flagging their videos?
Here's your golf clap, YouTube.

------
rmdoss
Those are very annoying and dangerous. Glad Youtube is doing something.

If you have young kids, be careful on what you allow on their devices (ipads,
xbox, iphones, etc).

Just the other day, I noticed a young kid (~9yo) watching some type of porn on
an iPad, while the parents were paying attention the other kid play softball.
I told the mom and she freaked out.

What I am doing for my own kids lately:

-Enable Parental control on their devices, so they can't install, delete or modify any the apps.

-Force a Family Filter through DNS: OpenDNS, Norton, CleanBrowsing ( Lately I have been using CleanBrowsing - [https://cleanbrowsing.org](https://cleanbrowsing.org) \- as it enforces SafeSearch + Safe Youtube by default.

-Disable Flash & Java.

-Install an adblocker.

-Check their browser histories from time to time to see whats up. They are all pretty young (under 10), so didn't learn how to clear history yet. I wish there was a way to prevent cleaning up history on the ipad.

Any other things I might be missing?

~~~
gizmodo59
I would rather give them something else to do instead of going through so many
control measures for internet access (Not saying it should be banned). There
are so many things they can learn without internet and so many things they can
learn with just computer and no internet too.

~~~
remarkEon
I don’t have kids yet (on the horizon) but my plan is to do what my father did
to me: make me play outdoors as much as possible. They will learn programming,
but on a machine I set up and control. Hopefully Boy Scouts can Bridge the
gap.

~~~
jacobush
Please do that. And _do_ , i.e. don't just have that ambition now, which will
easily whither in the wee hours of the night. Prepare beforehand so you are
equipped to execute your plan when the day comes. Plan days off or whatever it
takes to make your plan a reality.

------
reustle
It's (un)surprising how fast YouTube responds to this somewhat mild criticism,
while holding steady on their radio silence regarding the large amounts of
huge creators who are getting demonetized and community strikes against their
accounts. Nearly every big channel I watch has posted a video complaining
about it in the past 2 months, with many just this week.

Gives you some good insight on where their priorities are.

~~~
LyndsySimon
What communities are you seeing this in?

In the firearms/gun rights communities, it seems like the prevailing opinion
is that YouTube is specifically targeting them based on political bias.

I've not really considering it much, but your comment makes me wonder if their
issues are part of a much larger pattern.

~~~
rhizome
The persecution complex comes directly from the NRA's uncompromising lobbying
and ad strategies, and the perception of threats is based on received wisdom
formulated entirely through the gun industry's profit motive.

~~~
MichaelGG
What? You sure it doesn't come from the steady erosion of gun rights? Calls
from all sorts of shifty politicians to restrict things, even when it makes no
sense. Like after the LV shooting, when there is still no explanation
available, just lies, yet people still use it to justify taking away more
rights?

I used to think the NRA was nuts, then I saw that there's no negotiating with
the other side. Gun owners only stand to lose, and have consistently had their
rights destroyed. If they didn't have a persecution complex, they wouldn't be
paying attention.

~~~
rhizome
_have consistently had their rights destroyed._

They absolutely have not, and this formulation illustrates the extreme
positioning that the NRA has fostered for you to adopt.

If you think the NRA stands for gun owners' rights more than the profits of
the manufacturers, explain their response to the Philando Castile murder.

~~~
MichaelGG
Really? California lawmakers that literally invent terms write anti gun laws.
Hell in Canada we had people flip through a magazine and cross out scary guns.
There's even non existent guns banned by name.

The only NRA response I found echos what I first thought. Gun pointed at you?
Don't move a single bit unless exactly directed. I figured that out in real-
time, because I'm not going to trust some stressed out cop to stay chill.
Particularly more if I appeared to be part of the highest crime demographic.
It's still unfortunate and the cop should have had more training perhaps. But
I guess I'm falling for propaganda.

------
balls187
With all the child-friendly content available on Netflix, Hulu, and HBO (the
home of Seaseme Street), I think I'm going to skip youtube until my son is
older.

~~~
ehsankia
Youtube should really offer a mode where the parent gets the whitelist
specific channels. There are plenty of channels full of amazing educational
content, and with a whitelist, there's a near zero chance that these channels
would suddenly start uploading bad content.

~~~
jacobr
This. My 7 year old watches some awesome Lego building channels and some
gamers that I've checked to be OK.

For at least 6 months we have forbidden our 3 year old to watch YouTube
because he ended up at some (harmless, but totally braindead) Spiderman
nursery rhyme video and I figured he would be caught by bad algorithms.

Sometimes the 7 year old wants to be nice to his brother and searches for
spiderman. He knows they shouldn't watch violent stuff, but it feels like a
drug somehow to watch autogenerated content at all.

~~~
balls187
> it feels like a drug somehow to watch autogenerated content at all.

I'm a child of the 80's, and many of the cartoons I watched still hadn't been
censored of their racist imagery.

I don't believe it harmed me, though oddly enough when I play Cuphead, I do
occasionally expect a caricature of someone in blackface or stereotypical
japanese to show up, simply because the game shares it's art style with Max
Fleischer era cartoons.

~~~
jacobr
> I don't believe it harmed me

That's very hard to know though. We all have unconscious stereotypes.

------
j-c-hewitt
Youtube went the wrong direction with ad targeting. It chased after huge brand
advertising budgets while essentially trying to portray Youtube as equivalent
to TV.

If they had instead aimed to make Youtube more similar to Adwords in terms of
trying to show content-relevent ads on the right content, much of this
wouldn't have become an issue later on with people basically spamming Google
and the wrong ads showing up on irrelevant content.

------
feintruled
I must confess my 7 year-old saw one of these Peppa Pig videos and I haven't
seen him laugh so hard in his life. I think he is of an age where he realises
this is something someone has created as a joke, I can see how a younger child
would be upset.

~~~
dkarl
It's weird. Some people get it, and some people don't. My dad is pretty tech-
illiterate but he understands trolls perfectly and has an understanding of
Poe's Law that predates the internet. My mom is the one who helps him use the
computer, and she just doesn't get the combination of humor and malice. Are
they being mean, or are they laughing? Which is it? She can't imagine it being
both at the same time. And she totally gets all the other forms of pleasure
that go along with malice. She doesn't have a problem watching a crime movie
(or the news) and understanding that the bad guy was killing people for sexual
gratification or the pleasure of revenge or the pleasure of humiliating
another person. She totally gets it that doing bad things to other people can
feel good. It's humor, specifically, that she can't recognize as a motive, and
it makes her vulnerable because she can't spot trollish intentions and can't
really process them after the fact either, which makes trolling doubly
hurtful.

For example, you probably have a friend that you would trip to create a
hilarious pratfall, knowing that he won't feel deeply hurt by it, because he
understands your intention and might have done the same thing given the
opportunity even though you both really like each other. My mom is the other
kind of friend who you would never ever do that to, because she could only
imagine that your intention was to hurt her and make her feel bad. Trolls
feast on that kind of blindness. My mom is old enough that she's beyond being
able to be hurt by the internet, but now I have a couple of nieces under
three, and I can't imagine what the internet will be like for them if they
take after her.

------
SN76477
The attention being brought to this by journalists wouldnt be happening if
Youtube were being more accountable.

Its fine if they do not want to offer a product for children, but when you do
offer something for children you take on a massive responsibility.

Youtube admitting the mistake and fixing it is the only answer they can give
of course. But it is a major point that they should responsible in the first
place, so responsible that a journalist isn't needing to write a story on
this.

~~~
thomastjeffery
> you take on a massive responsibility.

The problem is centralization. There is only one YouTube, and therefore
YouTube is responsible for _way_ too much.

------
Cpoll
Unrelated to the news article, but I'm alarmed that the usual HN balanced-
skepticism is largely buried in this thread:

Almost no-one has questioned whether these videos are indeed harmful to
children.

The top comment is a Medium article that sensationalizes these videos to the
point where I was afraid the video would destroy my brain a-la Snow Crash.

I'm picking up a lot of "please think of the children" and "you would
understand if you had children," and comments that read like a call-to-arms
for a moral outcry.

On the other hand, there's almost no introspection about what OTHER things
(that don't make adults strangely uneasy) might still be detrimental to
children. if I'm being uncharitable, I might quote Neil Postman's view of
Sesame Street: “Parents embraced “Sesame Street” for several reasons, among
them that it assuaged their guilt over the fact that they could not or would
not restrict their children’s access to television.

~~~
thomastjeffery
I didn't see any discussion by the article or comments about censorship.

I think you are sensationalizing the article. What exactly is there to be
skeptical about? The article simply brought up a point that many of us are
unaware of.

The problem is that YouTube is something of a monopoly, and that what is
explicitly made for _very_ young children is not what any of us would expect.
It's simply important to be aware of that fact.

~~~
Cpoll
I might not have been clear enough, sorry, but my very first sentence was
'Unrelated to the news article.' I make no comment to the article.

------
bkeroack
Google "elsagate" for the full backstory here. Most of these videos are
essentially grooming tools for pedophiles, and the creators make substantial
amounts of money on YouTube monetization. It's absolutely sickening.

------
jrs235
I blocked youtube in my house with dd-wrt on my router because I saw some of
the bizarre videos my children were watching. There is too much NSFC (Not Safe
For Children) crap floating around.

~~~
rmdoss
Yep, those are annoying. What I found useful is to force Safe Search + Youtube
Kids across our house via DNS.

Similar to this: [https://cleanbrowsing.org/articles/configuring-google-
safe-s...](https://cleanbrowsing.org/articles/configuring-google-safe-search-
vip)

But for www.youtube.com and m.youtube.com (it is actually the same IP).

------
captainmuon
There are so many bad kid's videos on YouTube, and I'm not even talking about
the algorithmically created or "Peppa drinks bleach" kinds.

For example, while there are a ton of real Fireman Sam videos, there are also
many that are just an endless concatenation of action scenes from different
episodes. It goes on for about an hour, instead of the ten minutes of a
regular episode. If you take it away from my kid he gets angry, if you don't
he'll probably fall over from exhaustion after a while. And in any case I
don't want him to vegitate in front of a nonsensical video for so long.

There are also tons of unboxing videos of toys. There are videos where some
guy plays with toys and acts out new episodes with his weird voice. You never
know if it is for children, or a satire/joke video for adults.

Then there are just videos that are buggy, stop early, have random parts
cropped... etc. and are just frustrating.

It would be trivial to hire a couple of students and find and flag all of
these videos (though not all mentioned in the posted link). DMCA and copyright
would provide an easy mechanism to remove this content. Adult TV shows that
are uploaded are removed immediately.

I have a sinister theory about this: This is tolerated by the copyright
owners, or at least someone in the content distribution chain. The goal is to
frustrate people enough that they will ditch YouTube and buy the DVDs.

I have since started to create a curated list of the good videos, and also
moved to a Kodi setup where I can put known good episodes - it helps a lot to
control the quantity and increase the quality of what the kid is watching.

~~~
ozmbie
>just an endless concatenation of action scenes from different episodes

These videos are basically electronic drug trips for 3 year olds.

There is no teaching going on, just attention and reward psychology. Any form
of structure or coherence is removed, leaving just reward-inducing bright
colours and fast movement. I really do wonder what affect this has on the
human brain when consumed for hours every day.

Don't let an algorithm-controlled, attention hyper optimised marketplace
control what your children see.

------
FussyZeus
Am I the only person who's thoroughly tired of YouTube attempting to be family
friendly? I'm not defending the videos with the kids characters doing sick
things, that's NSFL stuff, but the constant focus on family friendly content
is killing basically all of the channels I really enjoy watching.

I thought YouTube was supposed to be for everyone, not just the same lowest-
common-denominator mashed potatoes content you can get from daytime
television.

~~~
zimpenfish
> the constant focus on family friendly content is killing basically all of
> the channels I really enjoy watching

If you're not paying for YouTube, they have to get money from somewhere and if
those somewheres don't want to advertise on non-family friendly content, what
are YouTube supposed to do? Go bankrupt on principle?

~~~
imron
Something like Patreon where people pay for premium content would work.

They could set something up so creators could mark videos as premium, and then
people have to pay a certain amount to watch.

Google already has the payments side of things covered from their other
services, it really wouldn't be a stretch to add something like this.

Creators are basically having to do this anyway using a different site
(Patreon) so Google should look at how to bring that internal to them.

That also neatly sidesteps the whole demonitized for being advertiser
unfriendly issue, because the only people paying for various content are
people who want to watch and support such content.

~~~
skymt
Alternate take: video creators can already use Patreon; Google adding an
equivalent feature doesn't help them. It would actually be harmful if Google
decides to pressure creators to move off Patreon onto their own system, since
the creators would need to rebuild their paying subscriber base from zero. The
only party that would benefit from Google adding that feature would be Google.

------
jacobr
> The company also says the reports that inappropriate videos racked up
> millions of views on YouTube Kids without being vetted are false, because
> those views came from activity on YouTube proper, which makes clear in its
> terms of service that it’s aimed at user 13 years and older.

They need to take responsibility for YouTube proper as well, and not hide
behind a ToS. Kids is not even available on the Web as far as I can tell.

------
jgalt212
> that the issue is relatively minor. It says that the fraction of videos on
> YouTube Kids that were missed by its algorithmic filters and then flagged by
> users during the last 30 days amounted to just 0.005 percent of videos on
> the service

Any parent will tell you that you can read your child 199 good stories and 1
bad/scary one, and it's that 1 bad one that gives them recurrent nightmares.

------
bigbugbag
I remember reading and seeing a demonstration of how the youtube recommended
videos had significant tendencies to tend toward the worst, were it be fake
news, click bait, dumb stuff, mindless conspiracies or else.

IIRC it was linked to the business model of youtube and that it was an
effective way to keep the audience captivated longer hence shown more ads.

------
schnevets
This is just a bizarre level of incompetence on Alphabet's part. I can
understand being an open platform and allowing people to post content without
moderation, but don't sell a curated subsection without a human gatekeeper -
especially not one geared towards infants.

This could have been an ideal add-on to the YouTube Red brand. I hope instead
their reputation takes a hit from this oversight.

~~~
dawnerd
For a company that has its roots in search, youtube is soooo easily taken
advantage of by keyword stuffing it's incredible. You'd think that'd be the
first thing they fixed when they purchased the site.

If they just fixed that a lot of the related video spam would go away.
Ideally, related videos should come from the channel you're watching the video
from. Really frustrating to be watching one video and find out you're not
watching a clone account.

Example, Good account:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7wAJTGl2gc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7wAJTGl2gc)

What shows on related looks like content from the same guy:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwGnpaiepCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwGnpaiepCM)

------
dogruck
I suggest that kids use sites such as Starfall.com. They do not track kids or
apply any algos. They simply let kids explore at their own pace.

------
throw2016
0-7 years is critical. Most of us were exposed to controlled media. This is
not the case anymore.

Some of this imagery and content can have lasting and damaging impact. Parents
should absolutely watch this period carefully and either supervise consumption
or have controlled environments.

------
averagewall
It's depressing that popular sentiment on HN is generally in agreement with "X
should be banned in case it corrupts the minds of gullible people". Whether X
is fake news, political speech they don't agree with, computer generated
animations, advertisements, or whatever.

Why not treat other people with respect and leave them to manage what they do
with their own lives themselves instead of trying to force them to do what's
best according to an arbitrarily chosen American-left-wing-parent-friendly
culture?

Yes, this is children, but parents can manage what media their children
consume. Let them make their own choices.

~~~
musage
That's a pretty strong up thing to say in light of child abuse grooming
videos. Which is why I assume you say it ignorantly since you are nowhere near
up to speed.

------
9erdelta
I happened to watch a couple YouTube Kids videos with my nephew and they were
horrifying. Immediately switched over to PBS and let my sister in law know
that she should remove YT kids.

------
edgarvaldes
The most interesting bit, for me:

>YouTube says it has thousands of people working around the clock in different
time zones to review flagged content.

That's a lot of work, I imagine.

------
kyle-rb
I first heard about this over a year ago from the YouTuber Cr1TiKaL. This has
been going on for a while now. I'm amazed that YouTube didn't address this
sooner.

[https://youtu.be/3iq1TK3I2vc](https://youtu.be/3iq1TK3I2vc) (explicit
language)

------
redwyvern
It was kind of disturbing to see my young infant cousin watching stuff like
this without his parents noticing how bizarre these videos are. A kid's
youtube browsing can start with a normal kid-friendly video, and then end up
with this garbage.

------
Babooster
Finally! I'm usually against Youtube's heavyhanded censoring, but these videos
are sick and disgusting. I'm removing Youtube for my kids until this is
satisfactorily fixed.

------
reiderrider
Finally! My 2 and 3 year old girls stumble on these when watching baby videos.

------
technovader
Is this about that "Spiderman & Elsa have a baby" videos?

~~~
tzs
Don't these people do any market research? They would do a lot better having
Elsa's baby be fathered by Jack Frost, Hiccup, Harry Potter, or Thor.

I base this on the relatively popularity of crossover fan fiction involving
Frozen. Frozen/ROTG is about 500 times as common as Frozen/Spiderman,
Frozen/HTTYD about 40 times as common, Frozen/HP about 18 times as common, and
Frozen/Thor about 12 times as common.

------
patrickg_zill
I warned a friend about these weird videos maybe 2 months ago, since he has a
2.5yo who watches a lot of YouTube Kids.

This is a speedy response?

------
kyriakos
the content in question drives a large portion of Youtube's traffic from what
I understand. are they sure its a good idea?

------
tabeth
honest question: why is it OK if it's adult that's targeted but not OK if it's
children? Literally any argument you apply to the latter applies to the
former:

1\. still developing -> adults technically are, too.

2\. more naive -> naivete is a function of life experience. there are plenty
of naive adults.

etc.

how about we just not advertise, at all. this is virtue signaling at its
finest. as long as advertising is targeted, children will be targeted.
marketers will just make their efforts more opaque.

~~~
spraak
Because children are dependent, but an adult, presumably, has the capacity and
capabilities to make their own informed and mature decisions. It's often not
true, since emotionally and spiritually many adults are still kids, but that's
not the point.

~~~
tabeth
What is the point then? Why not just stop targeting people in general?

------
jimmywanger
Police your children properly.

Youtube is a place where you can monentize content or you have to censor
heavily. Pick one.

------
sharemywin
Need better categories:

under 5

5-7

8-12

13 to 18

over 18

questionable

~~~
sharemywin
It's ok for video games, movies, TV but YouTube kids shouldn't categorize
better?

give authors a chance to categorize their own content.

~~~
skymt
That doesn't remotely address the problem we're talking about, which is videos
that are wildly inappropriate for the age groups they target.

------
napa15
I find most tv shows targetted at children to be weird and bad for children,
they show adults behaving in an infantized way. This subliminally teaches
children that this kind of childish behavior is appropiate even as an adult.
It shows that caring about whatever papa baba bear on his little adventure
circus is still something you could concievably care about as an adult. You
may think children dont make that connection but brains are specifically wired
to understand what is and isnt okay to do and to mimick adults.

~~~
MichaelGG
By that logic, kids have been taught that adults are out to kidnap, kill, and
otherwise cause mayhem and the only way to stop them is fearless children,
preferably one that talks to animals.

------
aaron695
If you think this is an issue you are a bad parent. Or a bad parent in the
making.

I guess since most people don't get training in parenting it make sense most
people are bad. Shrug.

Try to articulate in you mind why this is bad (looking at evedence). I think
you'll find it hard.

------
vfclists
This stuff needs to go too

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhNbGTnA53s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhNbGTnA53s)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAedktI1nyc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAedktI1nyc)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIsVGDq8nd8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIsVGDq8nd8)

~~~
sctb
Hacker News is not a battleground for tediously dumb ideological skirmishes,
so please stop commenting as though it is or we'll ban the account.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
arca_vorago
Once again us crazy conspiracy theorists aren't so crazy.

------
QAPereo
I'm sure this will be done with the sensitivity, professionalism, and human
touch which has characterized all of Google's attempts to filter content, and
in the end be met with nothing, but success.

 _/ s_

------
Mz
So, when tech giants fire employees en masse and talk about Basic Income as
the answer because they don't want to be held responsible, you get people
churning out this kind of shit to make a few bucks because you can no longer
get an honest wage for honest work.

Yay.

~~~
crooked-v
A business owner who supports a basic income is also implicitly supporting the
greater taxes that would need to be levied on them to pay for that basic
income. I'd call that being responsible, in the general sense.

~~~
Mz
They also implicitly support their "right" to fire people at will and say "not
my problem because you have your UBI" even though the proposed amounts for it
are far below wages of jobs that are being eliminated.

It is a known fact that countries with insufficient opportunities to sell
legitimate exports are the highest exporters of illicit items. When people are
desperate for money and lack respectable opportunities, they lower their
standards or they starve.

Edit: In response to your added sentence, so many rich people do all they can
to find tax loopholes, I am not convinced that your assertion holds any water
at all.

~~~
freeone3000
They already have the right to fire people at will, and it already isn't their
problem. Now those people have some income instead of none.

~~~
Mz
Currently, UBI does not exist. So, no, they do not "now" have some income.

Additionally, I am aware they can fire people at will. But how laws and social
contracts get interpreted changes when policies change. Welfare made it vastly
more acceptable for women to have babies out of wedlock. It was intended for
"the deserving poor" and designed to help _poor single mothers_ at a time when
most single moms were widows. The language did not specify widows. It changed
the de facto social contract and altered social behavior.

The net result was an increase in poor single moms and an increase in the
number of American children growing up in poverty.

Most pro UBI articles are pretty disingenuous. They say up front that UBI is
intended to compensate for a permanent lack of jobs. Then they tell glowing
tales of how wonderful it will be to have UBI to supplement your underpaid
job. They don't actually explore the horror of living in a world with little
to no hope of getting a job while inflation erodes the value of UBI.

I don't get it, honestly. The casually dismissive rebuttals here seem to be
blithely oblivious to the dynamics I am commenting on and not genuinely
engaging those things.

~~~
gbear605
> They don't actually explore the horror of living in a world with little to
> no hope of getting a job while inflation erodes the value of UBI.

Better than the horror of living in a world with little to no hope of getting
a job while also having no income at all.

~~~
Mz
What I am suggesting is that we could focus on redistributing work. It isn't
inevitable that jobs should simply go away.

But I think I am going to throw in the towel on this discussion. It seems
pointless. Folks are pro UBI, and let's not let any facts get in the way.

