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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

#381

Post by worldsayshi »

krapp wrote: post #374
worldsayshi wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why they can't just implement a way to just show content that you have subscribed to. That way you can exactly control what you let your kid look at.

That would undermine their revenue model. Youtube isn't intended to be a walled garden for children, it's intended to be a viral social platform that targets consumers with advertising (or offers to upgrade to the paid tier) through the lure of content discovery. I find it difficult to believe Google never knew these videos existed, since they appear to be an entire industry based on copyright infringement and gaming…

> That would undermine their revenue model

That makes sense of course. In my mind I thought that doing this wouldn't stop them from running advertisements. But I guess it would undermine recruitment of new content creators.

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

#382

Post by balls187 »

jacobr wrote: post #347
ehsankia wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 th…

> 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.

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

#383

Post by michaelmcmillan »

y2bd wrote: post #236
cowpig wrote: post #155

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…

How do you know you and your friends turned out fine? I don’t mean to be accusatory, but I wonder what scale we’re using when we’re saying that this sort of content is “harmful”. I doubt people are implying that watching these videos will turn kids into psychopaths.

Well, violence is a pretty good metric. And that has not budged one bit since the introduction of the internet or violent games for that matter.

A lot of claims, both in the original Medium article and in this thread, are made on the effects disturbing content has on humans.

I am not saying that these videos are something we should allow, but let's get our facts straight on its effects first.

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

#384

Post by krapp »

worldsayshi wrote: post #381
krapp wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would undermine their revenue model. Youtube isn't intended to be a walled garden for children, it's intended to be a viral social platform that targets consumers with advertising (or offers to upgrade to the paid tier) through the lure of content discovery. I find it difficult to believe Google never knew these videos existed, since they appear to be an entire industry based on copyright infringement and gaming…

> That would undermine their revenue model That makes sense of course. In my mind I thought that doing this wouldn't stop them from running advertisements. But I guess it would undermine recruitment of new content creators.

The safest solution would be to download a list of videos from Youtube and run them locally as a playlist. Of course, that's not a solution that would work for most parents, or Youtube, or content owners, or probably the law. Second best solution would be curating a personal playlist of videos and to make certain children are always watching under supervision. Third best solution would be, ironically, preferring children's television over the internet.

As I understand it, Youtube isn't profitable for Google, and a lot of their decisions wrt their algorithms seem focused on increasingly desperate attempts at wringing some semblance of solvency out of the platform, so I wouldn't expect them to be very willing to work against their interests right now.

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

#385

Post by Karunamon »

ceejayoz wrote: post #100
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.

Same situation here. My daughter sought out phonics and sign language videos, and could count in three languages because of YouTube. It's disappointing and saddening to see it take such a quick turn to a harmful, dangerous place for kids.

Harmful and dangerous?

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

#386

Post by Karunamon »

spookthesunset wrote: post #328
mehwoot wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get what is so bad? If you watch the video it has a story, it is just really poorly animated.

You seriously don’t see what is wrong with a five year old watching that? Did you even watch it?

Perhaps you could explain it rather than making an argument to incredulity?

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

#387

Post by Symbiote »

platetone wrote: post #370
headmelted wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. My kid was watching an official kids channel inside the YouTube Kids app (I honestly don't remember which, but it was affiliated with a local TV channel). I have the parental control settings configured - and I had to snatch it off him when I saw a red band title card come up in the ad break. Turned out it was for the IT remake. Couldn't believe it, but lesson learned. This needs serious work.

My kids get to learn about living with HIV almost every time we watch Peppa Pig with a 3+ minute long commercial of monologues with people suffering from HIV. Also one time we got an American conservative extremist group video ad railing against transgender rights. And violent video game ads all the time. I signed up for YouTube Red for a free month of no commercials and it was great. I'm wondering if maybe YouTube i…

Maybe get a VPN to a small country.

As an English speaker in Denmark, half the adverts I see on YouTube are from the same company, offering English writing review. Others are either luxury cars or in Danish (broadband, holidays). I don't think it would be Denmark's style to have an HIV thing on YouTube.

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

#388

Post by brainfire »

Bromskloss wrote: post #201
mattbeckman wrote: post #138

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

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

As far as I can tell the first specific thing that the author calls out as something that should disturb all humans is that the Aladdin characters are joined by a character from a different IP. Truly terrifying to any company or copyright holder.

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

#389

Post by riffraff »

yzmtf2008 wrote: post #319
riffraff wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the point was more that maybe most are not as disturbing to kids as we assume they are, not that kids will stop watching all of them.

My little brother watched "fist of the north star" with me when he was 5, where people literally explode and evil guys routinely lick blood off their blades, and he still grew up to be a balanced person, as far as I can tell.

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

#390

Post by cowpig »

yzmtf2008 wrote: post #319
riffraff wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it at all possible that these "weird" videos are not disturbing to children?
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