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.
YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children
191–200 of 461 posts
Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children
#192What 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?
Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children
#193We 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.
For really young ages, I don't really see letting my kids watch something I haven't previewed, or at least something that I am watching with them and I am able to stop it at a moment's notice.
Even for slightly older kids, a curated platform is always going to be a safer bet than a moderated platform. It seems fairly easy to find good sources of curated content.
And of course there's just making sure they don't spend too much time consuming media in general. It's hard, but the less they watch the easier it is to be picky about introducing new things.
Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children
#194I 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…
I agree with this. When I first started browsing the Web I'd occasionally see weird and disturbing things. I'd then try to avoid them, recognize the signs of things that looked "off". I think this might have lead me to develop more careful browsing habits that make me a safer user today.
How can you possibly avoid it if the only thing you know is the home screen and sb always filled it with those pretty .. fuck.
Thats the problem with somebody else filling the homescreen. I never saw it that way.
So what kind of homescreen would be best for a kid?
Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children
#195Also, 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... I read it last night after the wife recommended it ... and wow.
My 5 y/o has found all of these videos, I guess they're linked by recommendation. And even weirder ones in the past month. One positive might be that I haven't noticed violent or sexual content aimed at children, it's just very strange. Not sure what to make of it.
If you watch long enough (I left it running on the side while at work, muted, out of curiosity) and some of that stuff will come up eventually.
It gets weirder when you have the live action stuff with kids' favourite characters murdering and raping each other. Somebody put in actual effort to put some of that stuff together. Other animated pieces are just a bad accident.
It seems kind of circular. Somebody writes an algorithm to try and take advantage of kids' love for popular cartoons. It grabs keywords, phrases, characters, tones, sound clips, etc. It puts them together into a short (or too long) animated video. The YouTube algorithms pick up on some common tropes and then those autofab end up in kids' watching queues, they end up getting enough views because they keep kids numbly watching (not knowing what it is their taking in), other groups start noticing and decide exploit the algorithms in the same way. At least that's how it appears to me...
Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children
#196The 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.
Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children
#197honest 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 targ…
You sound like a pedophile.
Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children
#198Also, 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... I read it last night after the wife recommended it ... and wow.
This is just the latest iteration of how any website is only 7 Kevin Bacon clicks away from rotten.com. The net is vast and infinite and funnels the human id. Autotegenerated content will never be a clean feed until machine learning evolves. Or to put it another way, teach your kids to talk with you if they see or experience something icky.
But you could use this to change the human id over time, not just reflect it.
Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never understood how it was possible for little girls to watch the same movie literally hundreds of times, sometimes twice in one day. Some day science will get around to the real mysteries like this. I think I've tried to erase the memories of torture I survived, hearing Horton Hears a Who played most days for almost a year.
Little kids have bad memory. That is factor too - it is more interesting to them cause they see something "new" they don't remember each time.
Absolutely, or rather, memory isn’t fully formed. There were movies I watched dozens of times as a kid. At the time I could repeat every word of the dialogue and songs, but I couldn’t tell you what the movie was about, so it was always enjoyable to see it play out.
There was a line at the end of some Muppets movie I would watch over and over, as the credits rolled—some nudge to parents like “I bet you wish you were watching this for the first time!”
Re: YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
ReviewBrah: https://twitter.com/TROTWOfficial/status/920395476209471489 https://twitter.com/TROTWOfficial/status/925346887753969664 https://twitter.com/TROTWOfficial/status/926838929751465984
HOW? This guy is basically a 1950's white-picket fence gentleman. I think we are seeing a concerted effort to attack major YT channels into leaving YT.
My pet conspiracy theory regarding Youtube is that Google wants to pivot it to compete with Netflix and Amazon, and replace user-submitted content with exclusive, licensed content that might actually make money.
But Google doesn't want to risk the PR nightmare of admitting that they no longer want 99% of their userbase poisoning the well for the 1%, so they use pretexts like demonetizing content to encourage them to go elsewhere.
It's probably not true, but Google either seems to be fantastically inept or malicious at this point, when it comes to their interactions with content creators and their UX.