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YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children

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Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children

#71

Post by dkarl »

feintruled wrote: post #35

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.

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.

Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children

#72

Post by richmarr »

EADGBE wrote: post #60
richmarr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

I'm sure it's just more hours to them; on something they're trying to get out the door yesterday.

I take your point that they're time constrained, but I dispute the implication that a differently proportioned team may make different decisions. That's an assumption that goes against the balance of evidence.

Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children

#73

Post by tzs »

technovader wrote: post #34

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

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.

Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children

#74

Post by imron »

FussyZeus wrote: post #37
imron wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a family friendliness issue causing this, it's an 'advertiser friendliness' one. Anytime an ad was shown on a slightly controversial video, an internet outrage mob would descend on the advertiser saying how dare they provide money to . Advertisers pressured Youtube for ways to advertise only on non-controversial videos. Youtube responded by demonetizing anything even halfway controversial.

> It's not a family friendliness issue causing this, it's an 'advertiser friendliness' one. What's the difference? In my mind those are the same thing.

Take something like the Rubin Report [0], which is reasonably family friendly but that covers socially/politically controversial topics and/or speakers.

Not too long ago, a large amount of their back catalog was demonetized. It's not 'advertiser friendly' because sometimes even just the presence of a controversial speaker is enough to bring a hate mob down on anyone advertising on a video with them in it.

0: https://twitter.com/RubinReport

Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children

#75

Post by sbjustin »

EADGBE wrote: post #58
sbjustin wrote: post #13

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.

We've had good luck with Netflix for Kids.

Yeah. She's only allowed on Netflix now. I've seen Sofia 10,000 times.

Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children

#76

Post by LyndsySimon »

reustle wrote: post #9

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…

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.

Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children

#77

Post by sbjustin »

ashark wrote: post #64
sbjustin wrote: post #13

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.

> 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 Yo…

Yeah. It's pretty amazing the speeds at which kids learn but seem to "even" up as they get older. My son is doing this completely different than my daughter. At 3, I can barely get my daughter to eat and my son at 7 months flips out if we don't feed him real food when we're eating now.

Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children

#78

Post by AckSyn »

imustbeevil wrote: post #69
ravenstine wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple channels I used to enjoy have clearly limited their swearing, probably because they are afraid of losing their livelihood. I just see this as yet another reason to have adblock installed. Hope you're learning to enjoy cable TV again, folks!

YouTube hosts, monetizes, and promotes their content for free, and you're upset they can't curse as much anymore. People like Philip Defranco, while still pointing out the damage YouTube is doing to the ecosystem, monetize outside of YouTube to maintain control of their product. If the people you watch don't have a Patreon / Sponsors / merch, they are willingly submitting to the YouTube monetization algorithm. It fee…

You hit the nail on the head. It's all about entitlement and that includes whining about the free lunch being taken away.

Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children

#79

Post by mmierz »

richmarr wrote: post #25
tmaly wrote: post #8

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.

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 h…

I can't comment on BBC, but I can't remember the last time I watched something on netflix or amazon that had missing subtitles.
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