The most egregious thing, in my mind, is that YouTube wraps toddler videos in ads for things like the John Wick movie and local breweries in my area. The fact that this isn't a difficult problem to solve is the strongest indication that A) YouTube knows exactly what's going on, and B) they frankly do not care because they can make a buck off of showing shockingly inappropriate content to children.
aren't those ads targeted to the viewer (you) rather than the content of the video? if you watch it in incognito do you see those same types of ads? I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment, just curious. Also, the uploader of the video certainly has made a conscious choice to monetize a video targeted at children. YouTube certainly didn't do anything to help the situation, but some of the blame should probably go toward the uploader of the video.
As an aside: my kids occasionally watch videos in the YouTube Kids app (version of youtube curated for kids). That app certainly never shows wildly inappropriate ads (though it does have ads).
YouTube is aware that multiple people watch videos under one account. They are also aware of the nature of the content of the video and should be able to adjust ads based on that as well.
> "aren't those ads targeted to the viewer (you) rather than the content of the video?"
That shouldn't matter; youtube should not be showing adult ads to an adult when the adult is watching a children's show. Did nobody at youtube consider the probability that the adult's account is watching a children's TV show because there is a child in the room and the adult put the tv show on?
>If YouTube isn't for kids, why do they host videos that are clearly and explicitly targeting toddlers?
Because parents would never ever turn on videos on Youtube for their toddlers to keep them entertained while the adults are doing whatever adults need to do, right?
Once you realize that kid content on Youtube is very valuable to parents who find it better than TV, ads aimed at adults start making sense. Because it's adults who go on Youtube to find these videos.
My toddler gets very angry whenever an ad comes up. Actually, he gets angry when we take the phone away from him, it’s just not worth it to even start a video anymore (yes, he becomes content for now but at the expense of heck later). We’ve basically gone with zero screen time now and bring books to the restaurant instead.
> " The fact that this isn't a difficult problem to solve is the strongest indication that A) YouTube knows exactly what's going on"
It may also be the case they're totally incapable of doing it right, despite trying their best. I'm not sure that possibility really changes the situation though; either way the outcome is not quality entertainment for kids.
It may be the case that they do it with sufficient accuracy to stay in business, but insufficient accuracy to provide quality content streams for children.
My above comment seems a bit unpopular, but I really don't think youtube is deliberately trying to show inappropriate content to kids. I think it's happening despite their efforts to do something about it. In other words, they are trying and failing. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but you've got to remember a lot of youtube employees have kids too.
My (uninformed and possibly wrong) guess is that YouTube wanted to maintain the fiction that, to the best of their knowledge, everyone using the service was the person who signed up, so that it could argue it was not intentionally showing videos to children. When YouTube knows kids are using the app, it's supposed to be doing lots of things to protect their privacy (which it has not been doing).[1]
Building an algorithm to guess when children were likely using YouTube on their parents' account, in order to show age-appropriate ads, would show that YouTube does know that kids are using the app. So my (again, uninformed and quite possibly wrong) guess is that YouTube did not try and fail at creating such an algorithm; they deliberately decided not to try.
FB is good at behaviorally targeting ads. Google is good at at search ads (90%+ of revenue). Google sucks at behavioral ads. Source: I manage lots of ad spend for many companies.
The most egregious thing, in my mind, is that YouTube wraps toddler videos in ads for things like the John Wick movie and local breweries in my area. The fact that this isn't a difficult problem to solve is the strongest indication that A) YouTube knows exactly what's going on, and B) they frankly do not care because they can make a buck off of showing shockingly inappropriate content to children.