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YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children

theverge.com

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

#311

Post by donatj »

crooked-v wrote: post #204
Bromskloss wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 “f…

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.

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

#312

Post by donatj »

yzmtf2008 wrote: post #307
donatj wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain the actual harm. Enumerate it. I get that you don’t personally like it, and thus don’t want your child to watch it, but do you think it’s going to make your child a rapist?

I'll cite a fellow HN user: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15674870 Or this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15674305 Or how about this medium article? https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-in... Many people have presented their case on this issue. In this thread or elsewhere. Please don't pretend they don't exist by saying "Explain the actual harm. Enumerate it." Where's your proof tha…

Again, you are only proving the Elvis moral panic argument. Other commentators agreeing with you doesn’t make a case.

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

#313

Post by watwut »

watwut wrote: post #127
microcolonel wrote: post #107

Earlier 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.

Why would someone downvoted this? It is true if you know children and it is apolitical.

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

#314

Post by fulafel »

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.

Those color learning videos were also targeting children, no?

I presume there's something bad about the new videos but it's not obvious for the rest of us.

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

#315

Post by yzmtf2008 »

donatj wrote: post #312
yzmtf2008 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll cite a fellow HN user: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15674870 Or this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15674305 Or how about this medium article? https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-in... Many people have presented their case on this issue. In this thread or elsewhere. Please don't pretend they don't exist by saying "Explain the actual harm. Enumerate it." Where's your proof tha…

Again, you are only proving the Elvis moral panic argument. Other commentators agreeing with you doesn’t make a case.

I'm sorry, but this is not just "Other commentators agreeing with you". Those arguments are, in fact, sufficient for me to believe that these videos are harmful to children.

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

#316

Post by Mz »

gbear605 wrote: post #305
Mz wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

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.

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

#317

Post by donatj »

colanderman wrote: post #255
joe_the_user wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reading the article and trying to figure out exactly where the horrible "mind scrambling" is happening. The article seems to say "back when I was a kid, my parent entertained me with contentless saccharine trip from sources we trusted (Disney et al) but now contentless saccharine trip is autogenerated (duh duh duh) and who knows what effect that is going to have on 'developing brains'" And would suspect, contrawi…

Disney movies generally makes sense and have some logic rooted in the real world . Yes there are talking animals and magic but the stories ultimately relate to the human experience. I think the problem with the crap the author finds is that – it is nonsensical . These videos addict kids by triggering their innate desire to seek out novel/scary situations and explore them. This instinct exists so kids learn about the…

I had to Google the Peppa Pig eating her own father video, and I can say without a doubt I would rather have my child watch that than Peppa Pig.

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

#318

Post by thomastjeffery »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #283
colanderman wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disney movies generally makes sense and have some logic rooted in the real world . Yes there are talking animals and magic but the stories ultimately relate to the human experience. I think the problem with the crap the author finds is that – it is nonsensical . These videos addict kids by triggering their innate desire to seek out novel/scary situations and explore them. This instinct exists so kids learn about the…

Sounds like the same complaints that were made about the greatest children's book of all time -- Alice in Wonderland. A book entirely based on illogical nonsense.

A book entirely based on illogical nonsense.

Not so.

Alice in Wonderland is a book set in illogical nonsense. The world is illogical, the characters are illogical, but the story is cohesive. That is what makes Alice in Wonderland so wonderful.

To contrast, what we are talking about are generated associations between familiar things. Instead of Alice in Wonderland's illogical nouns and cohesive story, we have familiar nouns and illogical story.

Alice in Wonderland took us on an unfamiliar trip, and made its strange self relatable. These videos are the reverse: they take relatable things, and shove them together in incohesive, unrelatable, and sometimes frightening ways.

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

#319

Post by yzmtf2008 »

riffraff wrote: post #167
yathern wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't believe in this kind of censorship and that medium article just reads like a bunch of alarmist nonsense to me. Agreed, to some extent. > When you're a kid and something feels disturbing, you turn it off One of the arguments made in the original Verge article on this from February is that young children don't actually behave this way. In fact, if they did, this wouldn't be an issue, since the videos wouldn't…

just as an anecdote, when my 3yo saw some videos she didn't like (i.e. she came across me watching something violent on TV) she asked me to turn it off, or backed in a corner where she couldn't see them, or walked away. She also saw some odd nursery rhymes on youtube, but those didn't seem to annoy her. Not all kids are the same, but I agree with the OP that we should maybe give the kids more credit.

These are some of the "most popular" child videos on YouTube. While I'd love to give the kids more credit, data shows otherwise.

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

#320

Post by gcgggfxsdg »

X-Istence wrote: post #140
roel_v wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm from The Netherlands, and I can't say for certain, but I can't remember a product being sold at a grocery store that had characters from a children's TV show/movie on the label to try and sell it" What? You mustn't have any children. There is cereal of Frozen and Moana here, Paw Patrol sprinkles, k3 stuff (forgot which), there's various franchise stuff in the dairy section, ... That's not even counting the non-f…

Wasn't that way when I was a kid...

Are you saying that the last time you went to a grocery store was 50 years ago? Congrats dude.
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