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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

#291

Post by rmdoss »

Those are very annoying and dangerous. Glad Youtube is doing something.

If you have young kids, be careful on what you allow on their devices (ipads, xbox, iphones, etc).

Just the other day, I noticed a young kid (~9yo) watching some type of porn on an iPad, while the parents were paying attention the other kid play softball. I told the mom and she freaked out.

What I am doing for my own kids lately:

-Enable Parental control on their devices, so they can't install, delete or modify any the apps.

-Force a Family Filter through DNS: OpenDNS, Norton, CleanBrowsing ( Lately I have been using CleanBrowsing - https://cleanbrowsing.org - as it enforces SafeSearch + Safe Youtube by default.

-Disable Flash & Java.

-Install an adblocker.

-Check their browser histories from time to time to see whats up. They are all pretty young (under 10), so didn't learn how to clear history yet. I wish there was a way to prevent cleaning up history on the ipad.

Any other things I might be missing?

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

#292

Post by jdietrich »

joe_the_user wrote: post #238
2020-3030 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting this article and it is indeed disturbing. It looks like there is just an insane amount of mind scrambling content that nobody should let themselves or their children experience. Given the Medium author's informal but useful initial analysis, this seems like a ripe topic for a formal psychological and technological analysis by some poor dissertation student or group of students who could survive the…

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…

The author is British. I don't know about the US, but our children's television represents the highest aspirations of broadcasting. Cbeebies and CBBC consistently produce programmes with the utmost of thought and care.

If kids TV in the US is genuinely no better than the pap on YouTube, then you guys need to picket the FCC until something radical happens.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/shows

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

#293

Post by treve »

joe_the_user wrote: post #272
colanderman wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Human beings begin learning to speak by babbling - producing nonsensical language gradually begin to make sense. That analogy is flawed. Children don't learn to speak by listening to each other babble. They learn by listening to adults speak in cohesive, logical sentences . > It seem illogical that a sense stream of images would innately dangerous by itself. If it causes the child to ruminate on a nonsensical topic…

You seriously claim that streams of nonsense is by itself damaging to the brain of a child? Just on it's face it seems unlikely.

What makes you think that that's unlikely? I find it completely absurd that a child can adopt our culture and language in such a short time. Kids learn and adapt at an extreme pace. why wouldn't you think throwing nonsense in there would affect development?

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

#294

Post by aerodeck »

joe_the_user wrote: post #272
colanderman wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Human beings begin learning to speak by babbling - producing nonsensical language gradually begin to make sense. That analogy is flawed. Children don't learn to speak by listening to each other babble. They learn by listening to adults speak in cohesive, logical sentences . > It seem illogical that a sense stream of images would innately dangerous by itself. If it causes the child to ruminate on a nonsensical topic…

You seriously claim that streams of nonsense is by itself damaging to the brain of a child? Just on it's face it seems unlikely.

I'm surprised no-one in this entire thread has even mentioned the possibility that autism, OCD, ADHD, etc. might be, in part, caused by such streams of nonsense.

Human sociality needs to be boostrapped. Kids watching this all-day-every-day are /definitely/ gonna grow up funny. Why do you think daycare costs more than a mortage?

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

#295

Post by balls187 »

ehsankia wrote: post #277
balls187 wrote: post #136

With all the child-friendly content available on Netflix, Hulu, and HBO (the home of Seaseme Street), I think I'm going to skip youtube until my son is older.

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.

> there's a near zero chance that these channels would suddenly start uploading bad content.

Probably not a threat, but Youtube channels are really only protected by the strength of their owners accounts.

For netflix et al, not only is the content curated, the content is created by known companies.

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

#296

Post by aerodeck »

plink wrote: post #270
andrepd wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you even trying to compare a Disney film or similar "saccharnine contentless" media to the sheer acid trip nightmare fuel that is videos like these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXjJdv5fj5k

Watching that is tantamount to reading Act II from The King in Yellow.

Watching that was worse than August Underground's Mordum.

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

#297

Post by aerodeck »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #235
crooked-v wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely algorithmic generation seems less likely to me than Southeast Asian video factories that use cheap labor to churn out a bajillion variations of the same thing with different keywords and characters slotted in.

You are probably right ATM, but the technology is improving rapidly. At any rate, it is entirely plausible that the story themes are autogeneratrd (using a neural net to identify hot topics, then curating what it can produce on its own).

You'd probably do a cheaper and better job just spending 15 minutes browsing youtube, then calling your buddy in Macedonia.

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

#298

Post by aerodeck »

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.

Alice in Wonderland was written by a mathematician.

These videos are made by the same Macedonian teenagers who s*@!-posted Donald Trump into the white house.

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

#299

Post by yzmtf2008 »

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…

>When you're a kid and something feels disturbing, you turn it off.

Do you realize these are the "most popular" child videos on YouTube? Gosh, the fact that these people are making money off of it is proof that "kids" are watching these videos, and are apparently not capable of "just turning them off". Yeah right, maybe that happened to you. I'm not confident my (hypothetical) kid watching these videos can turn them off, at all.

Can you please not claim "censorship", "evil corporation", "global scale", "alarmist", and look at this issue directly? GOSH, these are objectively bad issues, and why can't you just not let children see them? Not everyone out there is trying to "brainwash" your kids. The world is a better place without these videos.

These are bad videos. Children should not be shown these videos. I applaud YouTube for "censoring" these things.

If you're the kind of parent that feels "this is censorship", "no one should tell my kid not to watch these videos", and "my kids are totally okay with watching these videos", then I really think you need some serious help.

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

#300

Post by peteretep »

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?

    > What was the disturbing thing?
That we as humans work under the assumptions that the things we consume have at least a basic level of curation involved in them. This assumption is now no longer true.

Sitting a child in front of YouTube is now essentially equivalent to running a fuzzer / AFL on an infant mind. Who the hell knows how the human brain will react?

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