Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find that video deeply unsettling.
Same. I particularly found the use of a bong-rip sound effect when the car was in the paint very odd.
It’s steam, not bong rip.
YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers
161–170 of 261 posts
Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having never seen any of these videos, that video is weirdly engaging. It has something logical to it, but its way more abstract than a true story. Its actually really fascinating that there is some thread to follow along with and a certain amount of surprise even if it is largely meaningless. It makes me think that once you've memorized all the narrative and visual tropes of western media, your bog standard reality…
> It makes me think that once you've memorized all the narrative and visual tropes of western media, your bog standard reality TV is probably as intellectually engaging as videos like these. As someone who can't help but look for those narrative and visual tropes, I can indeed confirm that the bog standard reality TV show, and the vast majority of non-reality TV shows are about this intellectually un-engaging.
I also wonder if it's somehow specifically engineered to keep your attention. The alternating yellow and black lines specifically seemed like a weird feature, and it made me wonder if the whole thing wasn't somehow calibrated, rather than low-effort and arbitrary.
Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There was also a network level curator like PBS, Nickelodeon or Disney. That's kind of the point of YT though is to completely bypass the network curation. Nobody has what you want on or won't put your stuff on? Screw 'em! We bring you YouTube. The You was the big deal that bucked the network concept. So no, there's never going to be a human curator for all of YT. If channels want to curate themselves, then they may…
>That's kind of the point of YT though is to completely bypass the network curation. Instead we have algoautoplay. I'm describing opt in playlist producers. Why couldn't there be a level of "playlist curators" who exist not as channels. "Bob puts together really good playlists, whitelist all Bob approved videos." I subscribe to 10 curators and bobs my uncle. I want to follow bob for the videos he suggests not the one…
This is actually a brilliant idea and Youtube almost supports it. Channels can have playlists that have any videos, not only their own. All that's missing is to be able to restrict an account to certain playlists.
The other part is how to incentivize the creation of the playlists.
Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve wondered too. I remember looking into the various conspiracies / scandals from a few years back (Elsagate and similar things) and some of it was just extremely bizarre (and likely frightening to some kids) and just had such a mass of content. There are all sorts of conspiracies from some psyop stuff to AI/ML generated content. I have not ideas what to even begin to think. The easiest answer I suppose is just som…
This stuff doesn't require corporate conspiracies. Imagine being a tech-literate person in some very poor country. You discover that if you churn out Flash videos of pregnant Spiderman pulling thorns out of a kitten's paws while spiders crawl down the walls and Elsa is vomiting in the background, you can make a pretty good living for your area without leaving your apartment. You might object to the idea. But, it only…
Is this actually a real video?
Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
The people at Google/Youtube really make it hard for quality content to succeed most of the time and their beloved algorithms mostly just boil down to "If a person clicks X, bombard them with as much things as close to X as possible from now on". (Also their obsession with "engagement" which translates to outrage, but I hope this is less relevant in Youtube Kids...) The danger for kids also stems from this in my opin…
It's uncanny how bad the major players are at this. You can click here [1] to see your supposed 'interests'. It's uncannily bad. 'Combat Sports' , 'Boating', 'Construction and Power Tools' and 'Cricket' (!) apparently among interests they think I haven though they are subjects which don't cross my mind. I don't think I've even thought about 'Cricket' other than for them to tell me it's 'an interest'. [1] https://adss…
I have :
Parental Status : Not A Parent
Parenting
Nursery & Playroom
Babies & Toddlers
Baby & Toddler Toys
Baby Care & Hygiene
Baby Strollers & Transport
Child Care
Children's Clothing
Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Content farming at its best. Cheap assets and autogenerated computer voice, someone is churning a dozen of these every day with different subjects. Then they're posted to dozens of YT channels in different languages with highly algorithm-optimised names and descriptions. Boom, money.
Who is paying money to target kids that young?
it's not like 2 year olds have their own google account. It's the parent's account being advertised to
Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers
#167Can confirm. There is a strain of video (below) on there that is just like perceptual candy to kids. And there are LOADS of these videos in slightly different versions. My own anecdote: Our 2 year old found these videos (3 years ago): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7IsNFDtG4U&list=PLHZrFxrJbt... At first we were like "seems fine, colors and shapes...keeps him engaged". After a month or two he could just stare slack…
Am I the only one who doesn't see what's so creepy about this? It's a bunch of colors, and cars being dipped into the colors, with dumb music and sfx. Is it really so harmful? Honestly curious as I don't have kids of my own, so not sure.
I'd make a guess that the video in question hijacks the reward system in the brains by showing repetitive, almost identical, but slightly different events: kids still learn to predict the world and when they see their prediction as correct, their brains produces dopamine. It doesn't work on adults because for an adult brain there's nothing to predict there.
Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers
#168Youtube is a vapid wasteland. Is there interesting stuff? Sure. But it won't be recommended to you. And that's what the service really is, a recommendation engine. If there was no algorithm, just a video host, youtube would be much better.
> Is there interesting stuff? Sure. But it won't be recommended to you.
There is a lot of interesting stuff on YouTube that is recommended to me, at least when I am logged in.
When I am browsing in private mode or looking at the "trending" tab, it is less relevant to my interests (to put it gently) but it is not all terrible either.
The comment section is the worst though, and it seems like YouTube is working hard at making is as uninteresting as possible. It looks like they are somewhat successful at preventing it from being toxic, but it looks like it works by killing all form of discussion and instead put forward endlessly copy-pasted memes.
Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
The people at Google/Youtube really make it hard for quality content to succeed most of the time and their beloved algorithms mostly just boil down to "If a person clicks X, bombard them with as much things as close to X as possible from now on". (Also their obsession with "engagement" which translates to outrage, but I hope this is less relevant in Youtube Kids...) The danger for kids also stems from this in my opin…
I've noticed that its basically impossible for Youtube to recommend me anything outside the bubble it has assigned me. I end up using guest accounts to find new content but even that doesn't work too well (the guest account also ends up in its own bubble) and generally only recommends the most popular videos in a region so I even switch regions sometimes.
And lord help you if you accidentally click on some drivel that's suggested. It'll take years of ignoring it before it and similar videos are no longer suggested.
Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
This stuff doesn't require corporate conspiracies. Imagine being a tech-literate person in some very poor country. You discover that if you churn out Flash videos of pregnant Spiderman pulling thorns out of a kitten's paws while spiders crawl down the walls and Elsa is vomiting in the background, you can make a pretty good living for your area without leaving your apartment. You might object to the idea. But, it only…
Is this actually a real video?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate
There are thousands of video variations of that theme. Someone else here mentioned people cosplaying the characters in creepy ways. I think it started there and evolved rapidly into automated production of reptile-brain trigger material.