KIDEODROME: scary "Kid's Youtube" algorithms, fringe programming, insert conspiracy theory here

I think this first came up on the I Love People-Making board in response to this:

https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2

for discussion there, see this thread:

execrable children's programming pox

then there was also some discussion on the alt-right thread starting here:

the alt-right

in short, wtf, the internet is eating itself and going insane

any search-friendly tweaks to the thread title are welcome

how about "Superheroes Learn Colors Fun Babies Elsa Venom Finger Family Nursery Rhymes Apocalyptic Dystopia"

i can't really handle learning about this thing

huge empathy to parents

is that a patronizing post? i just want to give hugs to parents, i feel for you having to deal with the frickin INTERNET and "PHONES"

Idk i just dont give my kids phones/youtube access, it isnt that hard

this is on ile it's a point and gawk thread

Is this also thread where we post the cream of the crop from thos exciting new genre?

*this

sure! click at your own risk

there was a time when we let our son have access to an ipad half supervised as he watched various kids songs videos (of the dumb but mostly innocuous variety) and then autoplay turned up something where one crude cartoon stabbed the other and that was the end of that phase, internet disabled on that.

this would have been about two years ago, i think. thankfully he didnt really have any frame of reference of what he saw, though he did ask about it a couple of times afterwards which we shooed away fairly successfully. anyway, fuck the internet, an actually terrible thing humans invented.

My daughter was watching a 2+hr compilation video of Caillou a few years ago and the last scene or so was a demonic voice saying crazy shit. I ran in from the other room (Caillou is painful to be around), and quickly shut it off. I'm not sure if that's what is happening on these videos, but luckily she's just into slime / toy unboxing videos now.

fwiw the article initially referenced goes into the unboxing videos, be careful with the way the algorithms switch to other videos after one is over

CBeebies is our uk saviour.

Gigglebiz counts as one of these ime

Okay cool so basically if I ever have a kid I'm going to have to move to an island with no Internet access until they're 18.

Finally found the Medium post I referred to in the other threa. Unfortunately, it's in Dutch. The pics will tell you a good part of the story though, esp the weird coded comments on YT. Nasty stuff: https://medium.com/@BryonAdams5/de-kinderkanalen-op-youtube-onschuldig-elsagate-59e6d315b654

the youtube kids video article is interesting but i think it stops a step short of capturing why these videos are disturbing to kidshttps://t.co/cIgyHbFoc9

— Normaler Things (@Cam_Oflage) November 6, 2017

Speaking of conspiracy...I get that you should be concerned if your child is being exposed to unwanted violence or explicit content. However saying that it should be avoided because it is so far removed from the guiding hand of its creators is a step too far for me. It’s the whole appeal to nature; since the creation method is not sufficiently natural/organic for this person, it obviously is nefarious. These videos aren’t going to brainwash your child. No more than Teletubbies did, Spongebob did, or any other cartoon that has annoyed parents throughout the ages.

Click tweet to read thread, obvs.

Sorry if this is covered in the thread, can't open it, but surely the point isn't that algorithms are inherently bad, more that they encourage rather than supress disturbing images, and the alternative - teletubbies or whatever - has been designed by educational psychologists to support not just learning but emotional development and socialisation. 'Brain washing' is an emotional term with an obvious inherent bias to it and IMO not helpful in most arguments.

I couldn't quite work out which videos were automated and which were homemade trolly 4chan things? Like - is the video creation itself automatic, or is it that the algorithms are dictating editorial?

(Or that editorial is gaming the algorithms.)

https://youtu.be/8ZzxbDPwD9Y?t=5m6s

yeah ok these get pretty dark

Need to create a kids' ILE as a safe space.

Slime C/D
Dorothy The POLLnosaur (voting ends in 5 days)

but yea this stuff is like "I Don't Want My Pizza Burnin" combined with @horse_ebooks except aimed entirely at kids

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERXq3r1Kq0Q

The Dutch article has me properly creeped out and no mistake

it lost me on the 20-step code breaking shit at the end but the videos mentioned look profoundly disturbing especially considering many of them have view counts in the millions

That's the weird part to me as well. These things sometimes have more than 10 million views! The ones with children acting are partic disturbing.

are they gaming the counts somehow, like through bots?

Reminds me a bit of Halloween III.

I see from that dutch article that Pobosiec is pushing this on twitter, thus tying it back to the alt-right discussion.

Those Bad Baby live action ones, which I think are Russian, are very strange and silly. I don't know if they would seem as weird to Russians or not.

This has really consumed my thoughts and bummed me out for a few days. I think we've spent the last 10 years of internet completely dominated by the twin ideologies of "the free market is good" and "tech means innovation." Both of which, as it turned out, are patently untrue.

I really see this as an economic/capitalism issue more than anything. Imagine being a poor single parent exhausted from working two jobs or, even worse, having to bring your kid to your night job because no one can watch them. No one with a shred of empathy would blame that person for wanting to hand their phone to their kid and say "please keep yourself occupied." The problem is that owning, say, a digital copy of a season of Peppa Pig is like $12.99 on iTunes or Google Play. Or Sesame Street costs $14.99 or whatever a month to stream on HBO. A Disney Movie is whatever, $12.99 HD or something. The easiest thing to do is end up on YouTube where users upload versions of these things for free. Jobs are paying less, people are struggling more and there's decreasing incentive for someone on a small income to actually do these things through the legal channels.

Now, for the middle and upper classes I think it's more a culture of tech snobbishness that reminds me of the FAG BUYS MUSIC cartoon circulating a few years ago when this was mostly a music problem.

And the fact that YouTube/Google not only ENCOURAGES this, but PROFITS off it, is a disgusting failure. It reminds me of Uber or something where they just broke the fucking law until it became part of society and then everyone just throws up their hands and says "what can you do." This entire thing is a product of the free market, but we're all a little complicit. It's all very saddening and just once more proof that we live in a disgusting dystopia where white libertarian tech bros are going to start dictating government policy in about 10 years if not sooner

wow @ that Dutch article, y'all weren't kidding about some of that

what exactly is the point of all this? does this sort of content do better with Youtube's algorithms or do they think that kids will seek that out, much like a 12-year old peeking at rotten.com ? or is there something more nefarious there? this seems like a different phenomenon than the AI-generated Animals for Kids videos

xpost to me

And, you know, it takes beaming uncanny valley violence into the brains of unsuspecting children for everyone to see that the last decade of the economy has been leading up to this, and we've all been living this on a macro level in ways we didn't really notice. "You know, Fox turned into a hardcore sex channel so gradually, I didn't even notice"

xp from the alt-right thread:

want to rescind my earlier comments about how this is more market failure than child abuse. I've seen some more Animals For Kids videos that can only be described as intentionally created to harm young children. the sections with guns. these people aren't getting a Nickelodeon show, hopefully they'll be exposed and held to account.

evidently on youtube kids until recently, millions of hits. profoundly upsetting. there's a very, very good reason Bridle didn't link. I'd unwatch if I could.

― Milton Parker, Tuesday, November 7, 2017 6:09 PM

we have friends who work at home and they don't really engage w/their six yr old much, they hand her an iPad and let her go to town. when i bring our kid over for a play date, she always wants to watch something on the iPad. at dinner she wants to prop the iPad up and watch something. we went over there another time and she was crying inconsolably for an hour bc she wasn't allowed to use the iPad before we arrived. she's learned to buy apps on the iPad. our kid gets bored there now because he wants to play, and she just wants to watch the iPad. she watches a million unboxing videos too.

:(

As somebody who was freaked out by the opening credits of Wall Street Week as a kid, just thinking about what I would have turned into with a steady diet of this pure incoherence is terrifying

I don't really want to live in a world where this is unregulated and we just let the algos do their thing. How the people who produce this and the people who enable it can sleep at night, I can't imagine

I'm sure most of the people who work at YouTube and Google sleep just fine

Basically, never allow your kids access to any part of the internet featuring any content created/uploaded by the general public, I guess?

I mean it's pretty well established that the anonymity of the internet allows people to be unfiltered id monsters.

I'm surprised by my visceral reaction too. Part of me wonders if it's overblown. If I was a teen, finding masses of bad-trip nonsense videos would have been hilarious. Now that I'm older I can't really be sanguine about it. It makes me despair that we've decided that if you can make money manipulating a system we depend on for more and more things in life, everything's ok. At some point you have to seize the reins, regulate, and stop people doing what is the equivalent of dumping dioxin into water mains

When I was 7 or 8, my mom cancelled pay cable after she saw me watching hair metal videos and Children of the Corn ... the thing that I saw that was the most disturbing was a documentary on Nostradamus' prophecies that was on PBS or something though. ... I think this thing is creepy like Halloween 3 (as mentioned upthread), but I don't see any real difference from unsupervised tv watching that was a touchstone of the Gen X latchkey kid era.

Idk - I wonder if there have been scientific studies done on children to see whether seeing this stuff has real developmental consequences, or whether this is mostly a case of parents instinctively wanting to protect kids from bad things.

i think part of the issue here is that the target audience is in the 1-4 range, not 7-8, also see Milton's post above re: content

never allow your kids access to any part of the internet featuring any content created/uploaded by the general public, I guess?

p much. I have no problem w this.

I wonder if there have been scientific studies done on children to see whether seeing this stuff has real developmental consequences

too soon to know, I'd assume?

I wonder if there have been scientific studies done on children to see whether seeing this stuff has real developmental consequences,

there hasn't been enough time to do this kind of thing, the internet's moved to fast and the kids haven't grown up yet

Yeah it's the age of kids that this stuff is aimed at that's all the more unsettling

I barely remember anything from when I was that young. I would say ages 7-8 would be more disturbing.

i can recall a lot of garbage, low quality animation & kids programming from when i was a child, but this seems like a new thing - to make these recombinative videos with intentionally harmful images. I haven't brought myself to watch any of them because the Medium article was unnerving enough.

I'm certain that stuff at those early ages is more developmentally crucial than anything subsequent tbh

but would they register as such to an infant?

honestly, if the concern is about their development, they should be reading and drawing and engaging in physical activities rather than watching inane youtube videos.

I would say ages 7-8 would be more disturbing.

Yeah, I remember the video store's posted for Child's Play scaring the shit out of me as a kid, to the extent that I'd never face that section of the store.

Agree that parenting-by-youtube is the issue here, over that of the actual content

they should be reading and drawing and engaging in physical activities rather than watching inane youtube videos.

see Whiney's post above about how that option is increasingly tied to class/income

bull fucking shit that reading, drawing or outside play are more expensive than a fucking ipad

read the fucking post

income, not really. the cost of the data plan to accommodate that isn't cheap -- compared to checking things out from the public library. Class = yes, unfortunately.

yeah "don't let your kids watch TV or YouTube" sounds good until you have a 2nd one

Whiney OTM

Experiences like these make me never want to deal with 'platforms' that exist to sell ads. (I'm on Mastodon, Fastmail for email, won't use Uber, etc. Twitter I can't seem to pry myself off) Which reminds me .. I have never given a dime to ILX. I'm ashamed that I've never asked if there was a mechanism. Is there?

Agree that parenting-by-youtube is the issue here, over that of the actual content

xp yes, but you missed it this time around and it was fully funded, it's historically been difficult to contribute before the fundraising targets are reached

The world is shit, and people are horrible -- the issue is how long do you wait until a child is forced to find this out.

yeah "don't let your kids watch TV or YouTube" sounds good until you have a 2nd one

I have two kids. My 4yo son watches (exclusively, and under the supervision of either me or my wife) National Geographic animal videos in cases of emergency (ie he needs to be pacified while we're at a doctor's appointment or some shit like that). My 9yo daughter does not have access to youtube.

Agree that parenting-by-youtube is the issue here, over that of the actual content

Have you seen the actual content?

i would not be at all surprised if corey pein's conspiracy theory (that the usual chanoid suspects are creating and seeding these kid-torturing videos to humiliate youtube's management) turned out to be substantially true

the issue is how long do you wait until a child is forced to find this out.

afaict the answer is until they are old enough to navigate the world on their own ie, once my daughter is old enough to go/be somewhere by herself (ie without the supervision of myself or another adult) then she is going to need a phone, and after that all bets are off. Currently my estimation is that this tends to be around the age of 10-11.

xp

they always start the fundraising drive during UK hours for a start :P

yeah, you can do both, obviously! but just plugging a child in and letting the videos play strikes me as extremely problematic. at that age, parents should guide their children through the internet imo - independence can wait until their defences have formed, surely

the actual content here is clearly awful in a lot of ways but there's a clear risk when kids are left to wander youtube unsupervised - for me that's the most hazardous aspect of this

I watched some old Goofy cartoons w my son in the parking lot on Sunday while we were waiting for my wife, I guess. Not something I would ever let him do himself, no way am I just handing him my phone.

xp

and by kids I mean toddlers, the very young

and yea I can absolutely see how this stuff can be harmful to children, even if they won't necessarily remember it. my older one is nearly 3 and it's kind of incredible how much of a blank slate he is

he really likes this old Claymation show called "Mio Mao" and in most episodes there is some form of cartoonish violence. he thinks it's hilarious but he'll say things like "Daddy...is Red hitting???" ("Red" is one of the characters), and he knows that hitting is wrong and will get him a time out. I can only imagine what having him watch videos where characters are throwing giant syringes into other characters and making them cry would do to him.

The thing I’m most terrified of my kid seeing is Veggie Tales. Now that’s some toxic shit.

the idea of lazily or procedurally generated video going seriously off the rails is easy to understand (remember how much fun we had in that idakoos thread?? "proud mom of a branch davidian -- and i vote!" etc) but also provides a fertile ground for plausibly deniable purposeful sadism

xp thanks sleeve - I'll keep my eyes out for the next opportunity, appreciate the info

yea I mean the shitty thing about this is not necessarily that it *exists* but that it's aimed solely at gaming the YouTube algorithm and getting "discovered" by kids who just want to watch superhero videos. it's not like the "KEEP CALM AND RAPE A LOT" shirt that was just an algorithm gone bad and probably never actually existed in any physical form

"KEEP CALM AND RAPE A LOT" shirt that was just an algorithm gone bad and probably never actually existed in any physical form

damn, there goes one of my holiday gift ideas.

It's really surprising that youtube kids isn't completely curated. If an uploader with an approved video changes the file in any way, it simply gets dropped. I'm sure Google can employ 100 people to watch and approve enough content to last kids essentially forever.

It is pretty shocking that it wasn't moderated, I mean damn FB has entire buildings of people purging snuff videos

It's not surprising to me. The fuck does Google care whether their content breaks your kid?

god just thinking about the people who have to do that as their day job upsets me so much

Those Bad Baby live action ones, which I think are Russian, are very strange and silly. I don't know if they would seem as weird to Russians or not

didn't Sting address this issue in the 80s?

Booming post Whiney

there's been lots of research on children's safety online, see Sonia Livingstone's work: http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/Experts/profile.aspx?KeyValue=s.livingstone%40lse.ac.uk (full disclosure: I work at LSE)

thanks for that!

np, she's a bit of a machine, there's loads of stuff listed there

The world is shit, and people are horrible -- the issue is how long do you wait until a child is forced to find this out.

― sarahell, Wednesday, November 8, 2017 1:04 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark

the world is mean and man uncouth! answer: until your kid can handle the threepenny opera?

sorry
i have no real opinion about these videos to share just wanted to reiterate that the world is mean and people are terrible.

People tend toward antisocial behavior when they aren't held accountable for said behavior and when they don't directly see the negative effects of said behavior. Hence way too many people treating the internet like it's some sort of sociopathy RPG.

On the lighter side there is no way Aphex doesn't use these as backing videos for his next shows

As somebody who was freaked out by the opening credits of Wall Street Week as a kid, just thinking about what I would have turned into with a steady diet of this pure incoherence is terrifying

Keep kids away from Adult Swim.

yea, whiney really otm

i'd never seen any of these meat-dripping zombie superhero nonsense weird things, what a fucking weird world we live in. who is creating these and why?

lolz?

seems like an awful lot of work for lolz

^ solitary posts that ...!

Whiney's post is so otm. It's why I linked the Dutch article (wouldn't normally because useless if not in English), as it keeps me busy. And all this def feels like a completely new low I'd never imagined possible. The "why" question bothers me, as I don't have an answer. They could harvest clicks and would get some revenue from that, but clearly you'd earn way more if you actually make a good kids video, instead of injecting it with this deep, at times very subtle dread. Dark days.

idk it seems pretty clear to me, if you can game YT's algorithm somehow then you get a good chunk of ad revenue

the question is why people are just learning about this just now despite having something like 3 billion combined views. clicking around you see a lot of these vids with 100k views but only 50 up/down votes and 2-3 comments. that ratio isn't really possible organically.

but clearly you'd earn way more if you actually make a good kids video, instead of injecting it with this deep, at times very subtle dread.

yeah this is the thing worth exploring. I mean even if this is all AI-generated the fact that syringes and machine guns are part of the program is pretty disturbing in itself. My fear is that the "pregnant Elsa" stuff is done specifically to attract clicks from curious 7-year old kids with a lot of questions

pretty sure syringes and machine guns factored into multiple episodes of Roadrunner cartoons

my suspicion is that it's made for lols but then picked up on by the algorithms and recombinated/mass-produced specifically because "dark" stuff gets more obsessive emotional engagement (<--- obviously here is this post's sweeping and unproven assertion abt humans) and we built a big machine to produce emotional engagement for money

Sarahell, surely you can see the difference? They're used as instruments in cartoons to drive the pun or slapstick home. Nothing like that in these.

frogbs the long medium article that never quite gets to the point like it can't say what it saw at the mountains of madness does say somewhere that many of those viewers are probably bots too.

xp - but we're fretting about infants and toddlers seeing these, and I feel like we are perceiving these as adults, rather than as the, er, intended audience.

also, some of these could be perceived as slapstick. I mean, Peppa Pig's family drinking bleach vs. Wile E. Coyote being immolated by a tree ...

xxp right - I just wonder how many. like a video with 100k views, how many of those were children? I wouldn't be surprised if the actual number was very very small.

So essentially your point is... It's not that bad? I'm trying to understand your stance on here, besides playing down the effect it can have on kids (which I agree on, but it's not the whole story here)

*on this

my point is that content-wise it doesn't seem that horrific, though the idea of technology subverting parental control is novel and creepy, however, I also feel like this is happening at a time where parents have/want more control over their children than in previous generations.

i'm creeped out by this too but it's funny that we_on_the_left suddenly have a mass child abuse theory of our very own, except being on the left it's not individual jews and catholics that are doing it (in a metaphor for their secret perversion of everything) but the architecture of the system itself (in a metaphor for its open etc)

are these all animated/cartoons, or are ones where people are editing in footage of actual rape, murder, or concentration camp victims or similar?

content wise these are way more horrific than old cartoons.

I guess for me, growing up, the news and real things like dying in a nuclear war were more disturbing than violent/nihilistic cartoons

well for me too but this is a step beyond. this is devoid of story, devoid of anything...it's just random images of characters with heads swapped out for meat zombies, stabbing or raping each other, etc. I know you and I grew up with things like Eraserhead and the Butthole Surfers and shit but not when we were like, 2.

it's like a great empty chasm of violent nothing. maybe it's the perfect entertainment for the US, maybe it's what we deserve.

the algorithmic CGI stuff is bad, but jfc those Toy Freaks videos

that guy needs to be in jail

I don't remember any media content from when I was 2, except for things like general color schemes

Please tell me Sara is doing D- trolling instead of expressing F+ opinions

Please tell me that Whiney just vomited out the details of his post and didn't actually believe the details made sense/were realistic.

this is written by the guy who made "tickled"

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/21-11-2016/hello-my-name-is-ally-how-children-are-being-exploited-by-youtube-predators/

are these all animated/cartoons, or are ones where people are editing in footage of actual rape, murder, or concentration camp victims or similar?

― sarahell, Wednesday, November 8, 2017 9:13 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Gotcha Sarahell. On the above, the ones that disturb me most are those with actual children - I've seen both Russian and American ones - being made to act out a 'story' that borders on, or veers into adult fetish/violent fantasies. Kids are acting out things probably not knowing what they are doing. They're being used. The scat videos, acted out as a pun or mere potty training, a child acting she's Elsa and is pregnant and is getting aborted ("that's a baaad baby in your belly! We need to get rid of bad baby!" with a cheerful tune underneath... For kids it reads: bad needs to go away. For adults: fuck if I know. Letting a kid lie there pretending to be pregnant, hand reaching under skirt but 'innocent' enough to not be offensive in the literal sense).

It's the ones with children acting, where they seem to believe they are acting in a story whole for adults that same story is a very different one, preying on them, are the worst. And this is a genre, apparently.

You started out this thread with, like, "parents should just have their full time nannies take their kids to art class and hiking adventures" and have now gone into "2 year olds are dumb, they won't really remember watching IRON MAN SHITS IN DORA THE EXPLORERS MOUTH FOR TWO HOURS HD"

xp to sara

For sure dying in a nuclear war is super disturbing, however another disturbing thing is toddlers watching hour-long videos packed with subtly sexual/violent imagery to a jaunty soundtrack of laughter and clapping.

It would be great for kids if their lives were so full of interaction and enrichment that they didn't discover YouTube until they were 12 or whatever, but sadly some kids don't have ideal upbringings. My gf works with vulnerable young adults, many of whom are single mothers. She visited one client last week whose daughter was watching one of these videos when she arrived.

yeah just let little kids watch anything, they won't remember it

(sarcasm)

Sara I dunno how much of this you watched but if you go down the rabbit hole far enough this stuff very much gets to be more than just "cartoonish" violence. the stuff linked in the OP is very tame, even that really strange video at the end. it gets much, much worse.

"parents should just have their full time nannies take their kids to art class and hiking adventures"

lol, this is some OI MATES BLOOD SAUSAGE garbage take on what I actually said. I'd fp you, but it's actually so hilariously wrong, I'd regret if you got banned again.

like I definitely read that thinking "c'mon, this isn't THAT bad" and figuring Bridle was just exaggerating until I found that he very much was not

it's just random images

I remember when Teletubbies first aired, the creepy this was that they were reaching this infant audience with the repetition and non-linear behavior that absolutely connect with how a baby perceives the world. This is taking that and kind of crossing it with Manga and post-Soviet nihilism and SEO.

*the creepy thing

can someone just link the really bad ones bc i did some searching last night and nothing approached videodrome levels of horror

like link to IRON MAN SHITS IN DORA THE EXPLORERS MOUTH FOR TWO HOURS HD bc i have a feeling whiney is just making shit up but if he's not i'd like to know

Since economic factors play no part in this, I'll assume Sara's Oakland is a luxurious place where women use their 24 months of paid maternity leave to take their kids to art exhibits of Xenomorphs 69ing

xp cool but can I request like an hxxp instead of a direct hotlink for that?

we're talking sitting at the breakroom table drawing on the backs of junk mail and misprinted documents with pencils and ballpoint pens -- or reading a book you can get for free from the library -- or like, running back and forth around the room, playing catch with a stuffed toy --- these are all very very expensive, exclusive things that only affluent white ppl can afford to have their kids do

@Mordy, check some of vids in the Dutch Medium post I linked to (some have been deleted, most haven't)

Mordy I understand idle curiosity but seriously why give them the clickz

i gave up on the "don't give them the clicks" thing a long time ago i just give everyone the clicks i don't care what the fuck they stand for

oh you

but thx i'm looking at the Dutch Medium post (i had avoided it before bc i don't speak Dutch) and the screenshots are illuminating xxp

"why don't these people who work 16 hours a day for $7.50 an hour just GO TO THE LIBRARY MORE" is the ilx hipster version of "If I was a poor black child, I'd learn to code and watch Ted talks"

have you ever even been in a library Whiney. I assure you there are a shit ton of poor people there.

This video does some digging into the Hey Kids! channel. Fascinating but v creepy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B1sRPwK248

well the thing is there's like 100 hours of Sesame Street videos for free on Youtube so it's not like you either pay for something or go down this rabbit hole

xposts

Children don't choose how to be parented tho, so it was be great if those with depressed or damaged or shitty or whatever parents were able to watch nice things like their better-off friends get to watch without it morphing into something sad/violent/degrading that they can't properly process.

No, not really. lots of poor children get books from libraries and read them. Some of them have libraries in their schools and classrooms. But let's be completely patronizing to the underclass, and assume that they are totally stupid and free of agency, and have absolutely no support systems.

beware the dutch medium post gets really wacky and outlandish but there is plenty there mentioned that is disturbing

there's this great PBS app that's free and just runs indefinitely PBS content and if you have an iPad already you can def use that instead of youtube.

that's good info, thanks

yeah there's a bunch of shit like that. It seems to me like this is really only an issue for parents handing their toddlers devices unsupervised. And those people exist and some of them are probably desperate and unable to properly guide their children, others are probably just stupid idiots. I'm sure it's a rich tapestry.

xp to self The video gets a bit weird and conspiratorial near the end (the channel usually covers youtube horror games and the such) but its still kinda germane.

My kid’s primary tablet is one of those Amazon Fire Kid’s tablet. It only has Amazon prime kids content on it, nothing user generated. I give her free reign over it though, the only think I block is Veggie Tales. It is interesting to see what she discovers and what she gravitates towards.

And in the UK we have CBeebies god bless it.

But the point is valid: for parents who are looking for alternatives to YouTube that won’t put deeply questionable (at best) stuff in front of their kids during screen time, way too many of those alternatives are pay-for.

xp I agree with the “kids shouldn’t be left unsupervised” but at the same time I’ve totally had YouTube on while I am in the shower in the past (no longer) and also think it is deeply shitty of Google to just say “well, you know, under 13s shouldn’t even be on there you know, we blame the parents”.

@Mordy, some examples. Other ppl: don't click.

FROZEN ELSA vs WORLD'S LARGEST GUMMY WORM w/ Spiderman vs Joker Candy & Poo Colored Balls

Frozen Elsa GUMMY TONGUE PRANK! w/ Spiderman vs Joker Bad Baby Hulk Gumball - Superheroes IRL Dismembered body parts, like a bloody arm, being used to beat up Spiderman.... m'kay...

Pregnant Frozen Elsa Gives Birth to Baby 👶 Real Life Superheroes Fun Movie (real child dressed like elsa calls 'spiderman', he arrives, cuts out her baby. Later on a 'pregant spiderwoman' has a child, at 8.20, and it's smudged w/ lipstick, apparently they find it an ugly child or whatever etc)

Spiderman & Boy Misha vs Scary KILLER CLOWN w/ Superheroes in real life

PBS Kids, Nick Jr., and Disney Jr. all have apps that let you watch their videos. Some are free and some are unlocked when you tell it your cable provider.

We also like BrainPop (some free videos but more are unlocked for subscribers). As Jeff notes, Kindle has a thing called FreeTime with a lot of vetted content; it's an annual subscription. Amazon, Netflix, HBO, and Hulu also can stream through parent-controlled profiles.

(real child dressed like elsa calls 'spiderman', he arrives, cuts out her baby. Later on a 'pregant spiderwoman' has a child, at 8.20, and it's smudged w/ lipstick, apparently they find it an ugly child or whatever etc

OK, I watched this one all the way through. The comments are very weird, like, "HOW COULD YOU MAKE THIS GIRL PRETEND TO BE PREGNANT THIS IS ABUSE" like kids have never played doctors and nurses before, like they don't play with baby dolls that urinate everywhere? Obviously if there is abuse going on behind the scenes then that's terrible but I don't see what's up with the content aside from it being generally poorly put-together. Oh no, a little kid pretends to have a baby!

Having said that, I did find the pregnant spiderwoman bit really odd. It shifted tone a lot. The "smudged with lipstick" thing is very obviously intended to indicate that it's the Joker's baby and not Spiderman's, btw, so there's a cuckoldry subtext. But little kids wouldn't pick up on this so I have no idea who it's for.

sounds lame and totally not freaky. bummer.

I also watched the Buried Alive one and didn't find that disturbing aside from in an uncanny valley way, and I'm not convinced that there is any evidence that the uncanny valley is inherently damaging. There's definitely a massive element of moral panic happening here, and it's making it hard for me to actually concentrate on the issues that are real.

"I have no idea who it's for" is basically where I'm still at tbh (and agreed on the doctors and nurses thing).

What gets me personally is the pairing of cheerful, chirpy music with images that do not in any way correspond with that cheerfulness.

PBS doesn't have unboxing programming, though, and that's what kids really dig.

Which isn't uncanny valley, to be clear, but off or leftfield at the least xp

imo some of the real issues are:

google/YT lack of oversight

who and why

what are other options (being addressed)

as opposed to debating how fucked up the actual videos are (I trust Milton on this one), I'd rather focus on the algorithm gaming/hacking (shrug)

sounds lame and totally not freaky. bummer.

― brimstead

Tbh I worry that this is basically going to be my position. Especially as one of my all-time favourite youtubes is this (putting the link in the text as some people obviously do find this 3d shit seriously wrong, there's nothing actually gross in it, though).

Sleeve, good points all. Plus yeah, include me in the "surprised that Youtube Kids doesn't have human moderation" group.

That's a great video Emily, I love it too, but it's in a different universe all together from the stuff on this thread imo

I dunno, it's got: poorly rendered 3D, repetitive music with childish lyrics, massively overextended length, no discernible narrative, surrealistic imagery, bordering on inappropriateness but not really (kinda nude 3D furryism), etc... seems pretty of-a-piece with some of the animation we're all meant to be so shocked by. I realise that the big difference here is that it's not aimed at kids, but a bored kid could easily find it just by searching for "meow I'm a cat" (which is p much what I would've searched for if I had the internet as a toddler).

But anyway, I don't want to take over the thread, sleeve has done a good job in pointing out the things that are worth discussing, I'll bow out.

Toddlers generally can't read/spell fyi

(okay, yeah, I realised that they weren't likely to be typing in search terms, I figured that maybe tech-savvy kids of today used voice recognition? Otherwise how are they even on this stuff in the first place?)

(and also I guess I'm thinking 3+ is toddler-dom and below that is still a baby?)

12 to 36 months

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toddler

they can click on links w/screenshots that they recognize? I've seen pre-verbal kids navigate through multiple folder structures to find games.

Yeah pre-literate kids recognize icons, logos etc and pointing swiping and clicking is totally simple

Realizing that most ppl on this thread have no direct experience w small children...?

Huh, that's pretty smart. Well done kids. And apparently I am terrible at the chronology of a human lifespan.

xp that does seem to be the case

actually I'd guess somewhere under 50% as opposed to "most"

lol ya got me i've never even seen a small child in person before

"Have kids draw or read books instead" is good life advice depending on yr circumstances, like my aunt & uncle did that with my cousin and he didn't get to see much of any television until he was in his teens, but the vast majority of kids in my generation did and whether that was a class issue or bad parenting or whatever didn't change the outcome, and I'm pretty confident it won't in this case either - most kids will watch YouTube, best to prepare for this.

our kid went through a stretch of wanting to watch shows all the time and then back at the end of July he had been watching a bunch of Odd Squad and I told him, "that's enough for one day" and he replied "if you let me watch one more episode i won't watch TV for 34 days." i replied, "well okay but I don't know, you'll probably ask to watch TV in a couple of days."

anyway he went 34 days, then wanted to double it, then triple it, and now we're on 104 days with no television despite my occasional reassurances (slightly begging maybe?) that he can watch a couple shows if he wanted to. he refuses to do it! i actually think watching his aforementioned friend constantly glued to her iPad watching shows maybe made some weird impression.

The only problem I have with most of this stuff (beyond the fact that a lot of it is straight garbage) is the apparently explicit attempts to get clicks from kids. There's plenty of similar stuff (see madcatlady!) that I enjoy as an adult but that I wouldn't expose a kid to.

I'm sorry but anyone giving a kid under 2 or so a tablet/screen/the internet at all is just... I dont agree with it. I wouldnt do it. It cant be good for their eyes for starters.

And while I get what WGW said about single parents/poverty/busyness, people in that position surely wouldnt afford internet plans/phones anyway?? (unless y'all have $5 a month internet or something weird in the US i dont know). And whats wrong with a coloring book?

(and yes Ive been around young kids recently, and seen first hand how this is impacting them - utter tantrums if you take the 5 year old's ipad away at the dinner table. That is not healthy!)

tbf 4-5 yo throw tantrums about any goddamned thing. usually it's more about them being tired, not being able to communicate, or some other issue.

Whiney's point wasn't about the money (people can find ways to buy stuff and poor people shouldn't be forbidden luxuries) but about the sheer unrelenting energy drain that is living on or below the breadline.

Or at least, that's how I read it. Feel like there was also an element of concern trolling there, mind you.

Lmao Omar your kid sounds awesome

'kideodrome' hehe

tbf 4-5 yo throw tantrums about any goddamned thing

Ha, yes fair point. I'm secretly glad I came into my stepfam when the kids were well past that stage already :)

xxxp emil.y otm about Whiney's post IMO, the really scarce resource for a lot of parents (in my admittedly limited experience of "step"-parenting and homeschooling a kid from age 6-8, pre-internet) is time and energy, not necessarily bandwidth for Youtube

I realize that this stuff evokes some visceral horror and reflexive concern-trolling in people, I don't think that's unexpected but I don't think that post was made in that spirit at all.

Well indeed, but I dont get why its not just as easy to pop a kid in front of a big pile of pencils/crayons and paper and some books? God, I think maybe I am just old :(

I agree with that sentiment but also don't want to turn this thread into "judging other people's parenting part 2"

omar's example is very inspiring, his cautionary tale is similarly creepy

Yeah sorry, not my intent to judge anyones approach at all, sorry if it came over as such.

nah you're good (I was actually referring to a tongue-in-cheek ILX thread title) and you have more direct daily experience with this stuff), I don't wanna play thread cop either but I'd like to keep the focus on the phenomenon itself for the most part

This is the thread where we judge other people's parenting

I dont get why its not just as easy to pop a kid in front of a big pile of pencils/crayons and paper and some books?

this is what my parents did with me ... very minimal effort on their parts ... mom worked like 10+ hours a day, 6 days a week during my formative years. I also watched a lot of TV when I was older, not to front like my parents were exceptionally virtuous. However, it isn't like there was the danger of someone editing scat p0rn into episodes of the Andy Griffith Show and CHiPS.

Eh, who would notice

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_broadcast_signal_intrusion

I dunno there were a lot more boobs on TV in the 70s than now, I tell you that much. (well, HBO etc aside)

didn't get why this was terrifying until i read the Dutch medium article

btw i must give ilx0r Sparkle Motion massive credit & e-props for coining "KIDEODROME", it got me to click on this

I still don't fully understand how these videos are created. I didn't think ai was good enough to make ai off keywords let alone a lowly bot for a cartoon

The 'how does it all work?' is fascinating. I don't think AI as such is involved - it's real actual people gaming the algorithms. Original article says this:

A friend who works in digital video described to me what it would take to make something like this: a small studio of people (half a dozen, maybe more) making high volumes of low quality content to reap ad revenue by tripping certain requirements of the system (length in particular seems to be a factor).

But even half-a-dozen seems a lot with cracked software, pirated models, cut and paste sequences, etc. And then more questions - I don't know how they mine for those keyword strings that form the titles. Do they get a optimum sequence then glue together some stuff that matches it? At this point, can you just get your spiderman model and 3D motorbikes demo and say 'Give me 1 minute of spider-man having fun on a motorbike' and the computer does the rest? Do they just have a big box of sequences that are determined by the demos/what they've found for free on the web? Or is someone sitting choreographing hulk vs joker fight? I can see single sequences make sense (villains bury heroes; kids rescue heroes) but I haven't watched enough of these to work out of there's an end-to-end narrative over their half-hour - do they bother with that, or is it just an incoherent run of zombies/finger-family/hen-riding/shooting/Johnny Johnny/learn colour Elsa dance? Clearly they're doing the least possible work to game the system - but what constitutes the least, what are the attributes they're min-maxing?

idk - a fascination with the mechanics might not be a healthy response to this shit, but I don't have much to add to the good responses itt.

nb, not planning on setting up my own channel.

Can we agree there's a difference between the auto-generated cgi ones and the ones with physical actors - apart from anything else the latter has a bottleneck of physical logistics.

This has been doing my head in as well, and I don't have children.

Just reading the first English language article and watching maybe two-three of the videos (including BURIED ALIVE, my god) left me disoriented for several minutes afterwards. This sounds OTT, I know, but the uncanniness, the nightmarishness of those vids not only disturbed me but had me questioning reality..
The idea that these could have been put together by an algorithmic neural network with no sense of reason or responsibility. It had me questioning everything I looked at for about 30 minutes afterwards. Like, is ILX just a bot? Is Donald Trump a computer program? Are the lyrics to the song I'm listening to right now the work of a human or have they been formed out of a salad of popular lyrical themes and then executed by a bunch of Russian hackers?
Then I looked at the Dutch article. Then I had a very bad night's sleep indeed.

Since this thread got started yesterday I've watched quite a few of these and read both Medium articles a couple of times. I now feel physically sick whenever I as much as think about this phenomenon. It really is one of the scariest things I've ever come across.

Can we agree there's a difference between the auto-generated cgi ones and the ones with physical actors - apart from anything else the latter has a bottleneck of physical logistics.

Agreed. The latter doesn't scandalize me that much - I mean yeah, it's fucked up and despicable but the fact that there's trolls wanting to do horrid things to children's characters isn't surprising, some of my first internet experiences were sites dedicated to depicting grizzly deaths for Barney the Dinosaur.

The auto generated CGI ones scare me more because there's no motivation beyond SEO; I'm not really sure if there are auto-generated ones that do the really disturbing shit (it certainly looks like it - haven't clicked on anything tbh, I'm a wuss), but if so I guess that the animation studios must see the success of the troll videos and just incorporate their plots into their word salad? Which still means at the end of the day there's human motivation behind them, but it's not "hahaha let's traumatize kids" it's $$$$

(though I guess that's the motivation with some live-action ones too, as per that video of the prank guys that turned to them - that's still really puzzling to me)

Plus I guess it isn't humans compiling those "six hours of Peppa" videos? So the troll vids can sneak in there, too, and that's pretty terrifying.

yeah I watched some of these. they are fucking terrifying and undoubtedly the work of some malevolent force, human or otherwise

also, the tune of that 'five little (x)' is the same creepy tune I heard blasting from the back of a bus a few weeks ago, except in that case (x) was monkeys. this kid was listening/watching the same tune for about half an hour. it was profoundly annoying & disconcerting then, not even knowing what the visual component might have been

Well indeed, but I dont get why its not just as easy to pop a kid in front of a big pile of pencils/crayons and paper and some books?

Both the crayon box and the book will be much less effective. Basing this on my own childhood memories (I don't have kids), the thing was that if you gave a kid some crayons they'd be occupied for a while but then they'd want to show you what they drew, talk about it, etc. Book keeps them occupied until they finish it (if they're a super fast/passionate reader) or (more likely) they get tired of reading. But give the kid a Game Boy and they're mollified for as long as you could possibly want them to be. I imagine the same is true for tablets.

(This is also one of the reasons why, in absolute terms, giving them crayons or books is better - but in terms of efficiency, this is how it plays out imo).

the screen obsession in kids is pretty crazy - my nephews are 5, 9, and 11 and they are obsessed with playing games on their kindles. kindle rules all in their house. kindle is the currency, the penal system, the reward. the tantrums they have or the good things they do mostly seem related to kindle, eg it's an incentive or a punishment, a cause or a cure. it seems incredibly difficult, i don't know how a parent is supposed to cope, presumably if you tell your kids they're not having this then they're alienated from all the other kids who do.

another part of me is suspicious of any moral question about new technology, not the stuff itt but the associated discussion of the effects of technology on kids. i never know whether to think "humans are resilient, we've been responding to new technology for years and people have been saying it will destroy us for years" or "maybe this new technology actually is dangerous"

perhaps both: human beings have always been shaped by technology, and mass cultural technology in particular: printing press, recorded music, broadcast media, internet. but there's no pre-lapsarian humanity, no innocence to lose. each technology shapes us in good and bad ways, and maybe more bad than good, as each technology has come out of and been evolved by the socioeconomic base that produced it. but there's no "humanity" outside of those cultures and those technologies. our current notions of childhood are themselves historical, contingent, probably transitory. childhood was not childhood even 100 years ago in the way we think about it now. what we expect children to be, know and understand is in constant flux, and not in some Whiggish progress towards the best.

but nor in some progress to the worst either, i guess.

this is what makes these discussions so complex - trying to gauge progress or decline is like some gargantuan game of whack-a-mole

Most of the adults in these children's lives are never without their phones, always checking email or twitface or whatever. Indeed, you're reading this on a screen right now. If we're waiting in line we take out our phones and scroll through r/eroticfurries or swipe some stupid candies around. In many homes, TVs have been left on as background for decades. Adults are constantly talking about what meme they saw online, what movies are good, what TV shows are interesting, what video games they're obsessed with. Every bar has five TVs; there is a screen at every airplane seat; gas pumps have screens; taxis have screens; etc.

And then we turn around and get all judgy at "the kids today" for thinking screen time is highly desirable and wanting more of it. Hmmm, where do you think they got that idea?

but nor in some progress to the worst either, i guess.

nah exactly. and there are probably billions of children and adults who have more or less inarguably "better" lives than their ancestors of 3 or 4 generations back

are there any technological developments that, with the benefit of hindsight, we can say were overall bad for kids?

anything that gives them dreams or aspirations

oh, and heelies

And then we turn around and get all judgy at "the kids today" for thinking screen time is highly desirable and wanting more of it. Hmmm, where do you think they got that idea?

Definitely. But this isn't a "do what I say not what I do" scenario, I don't think. Parents are getting worried about kid screen time and simultaneously parent and non-parent adults alike are getting worried about their own use too. I've clamped down hard on how/when I use screens, especially when F is around, and when I tell other adults about it I've been pretty surprised how often they tell me some new rule they've instituted for themselves -- from "airplane mode at dinner time" to "my phone stays in the kitchen now".

One team of app developers I know who focus on kids apps have also said they're a big backlash pretty soon, and they've scaled down their plans for big new app launches. They're now trying to figure out the "post-app world", and thinking about voice and other ways we'll damage kids brains in the future.

i guess i feel like there's so much you can do on a screen that it's hard to find a blanket ban or the like.

eg i could be writing something or reading - that never feels bad. i do buy a lot of paperbacks but i always have something on my kindle so i can use my phone as a book on the tube, and there's so much good non-fiction online.

or i could be rapidly flicking from one tab to another, the time i spend in each one gradually diminishing, clicking back on a tab i just clicked on, stultified.

maybe phones are the real issue - i know when i write i often put my phone in a drawer or under a pillow or something - have tried similar for watching tv and movies.

I have no issues with my own screen use, I don’t feel like I suffer in other areas of life or am missing out on anything. I can have sufficiently rich experiences in virtual spaces as I can in non-virtual ones. So I don’t have as many concerns with my kid using them either. There are limits and moderation, she still has to eat dinner and things like that. But she’s going to have to interact with people through screens/VR/whatever for the rest of her life, I’ll try and impart what is bad/good/enriching/time wasting/quality/harmful/etc while she is young, but realize it will largely be out of my control when she reaches a certain age.

surely every parent, who is concerned for the usefulness and happiness of his child, will, with deep solicitude, watch over his reading. He will remove from his reach such books as may tend to instil false sentiments, vitiate the taste, or corrupt the morals of his beloved offspring

the arrival of the book in the 15th century -- moveable type hence mass printing hence significant broadening of vernacular literacy and self-informed debate -- was a major factor in the length and all-pervasive viciousness of the religious wars europe was very soon plunged into, for a couple of centuries (with several follow-up outbreaks)

we have always already been on this hook :(

(the "surely every parent" para shd be in quotes)

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/9/16629788/youtube-kids-distrubing-inappropriate-flag-age-restrict

well then

so distrubing

This stuff is terrifying. I've noticed how difficult it is to keep kids away from default being on ipad/being on smartphone with my nephews, and those kids are being raised by a Sport Dad

it's not difficult

speak for yourself

I am!

How do you go about it?

When I say 'difficult' I mean they'll kick off and snivel and want another ten minutes or whatever, and it all has to be talked through. They prise the ipad away eventually.

at some point with iPads it's probably a bit late to put the genie back in the bottle so to speak, so it has to start from birth. w/my example i'm pretty surprised that he has actively chosen not to engage w/TV, and i've told him to call me out if he thinks i'm on the computer or iPhone too much. he'll say something like, "is that *really* important?" and it's usually not. so i shut it down at that point. it's embarrassing, really!

Haha yes to all that. The two components afaic are 1) set a good example and 2) set limits early (and stick to them)

I've noticed how difficult it is to keep myself away from default being on ILX.

I work in front of a computer almost every hour I'm awake so unfortunately I set a terrible example, and my kid loves screens. he's almost 12 now though.

What age is this cool child, omar?

He's six ("and a half!", he'd shout)

Need a cool kid to boss me off social media tbh

Tell him your imaginary internet friends have a lot of respect for his lifestyle choices. Right on, kid!

https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/9/16629788/youtube-kids-distrubing-inappropriate-flag-age-restrict

there. it's over

“We’re in the process of implementing a new policy that age restricts this content in the YouTube main app when flagged,” said Juniper Downs, YouTube’s director of policy. “Age-restricted content is automatically not allowed in YouTube Kids.” YouTube says that it’s been formulating this new policy for a while, and that it’s not rolling it out in direct response to the recent coverage.

The first line of defense for YouTube Kids are algorithmic filters. After that, there is a team of humans that review videos which have been flagged. If a video with recognizable children’s characters gets flagged in YouTube’s main app, which is much larger than the Kids app, it will be sent to the policy review team. YouTube says it has thousands of people working around the clock in different time zones to review flagged content. If the review finds the video is in violation of the new policy, it will be age restrictied, automatically blocking it from showing up in the Kids app.

YouTube says it typically takes at least a few days for content to make its way from YouTube proper to YouTube Kids, and the hope is that within that window, users will flag anything potentially disturbing to children. YouTube also has a team of volunteer moderators, which it calls Contributors, looking for inappropriate content. YouTube says it will start training its review team on the new policy and it should be live within a few weeks.

Along with filtering content out of the Kids app, the new policy will also tweak who can see these videos on YouTube’s main service. Flagged content will be age restricted, and users won’t be able to see those videos if they’re not logged in on accounts registered to users 18 years or older. All age-gated content is also automatically exempt from advertising. That means this new policy could put a squeeze on the booming business of crafting strange kid’s content.

tbh i'm kind of shocked that most of this shit wasn't already removed for copyright violations

I just want to add that the stuff I wrote about poor parents was not "concern trolling" but meant as a pre-emptive measure agains all the kool-aid men and kool-aid women ready to swoop in and just say "people should be better parents" like that's something everyone has equal ease and ability to do

it would concern trolling. it's cool, i mean it was entertaining but gmafb you don't know fuck about single poor moms and parenting as was clear from the fact that you thought they needed to let their kids watch youtube on their ipads bc they didn't have better options available.

was*

i mean maybe you don't know this but a large % of what you say sounds extraordinarily disingenuous.

like was complaining about racist cyclists (or was it racist motorists) also not concern trolling?

Mordy, expound on these better options?

the free PBS app on the same ipad

shut the fuck up, Mordy, who gives a shit

― "the fgti incident?" (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, November 10, 2017 12:52 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

concern troll better maybe? idk what other advise to give you.

Mordy is otm here imo

the whole "poor single moms with ipads who don't know how to monitor their usage" conception was p suspect. and I know whiney's steez is hyperbolic compression of a bunch of different cultural signifiers/buzzwords but ... often that doesn't bear any resemblance to reality.

my wife lets our 4yo son watch NatGeo videos on her phone in certain situations (when she has to have him along on a dr. appt for her, or when we were trying to potty train him/convincing him of the necessity of sitting on the toilet for awhile, or when he's on a long planeflight), it really isn't hard to set boundaries with devices either in terms of when they have access to them or in terms of what they watch, I don't think that's a class/time/resources issue.

Rich people can be sucky parents too, I can happily confirm firsthand.

some of the worst parenting I've ever seen has been from rich parents, no doubt

yeah I mean maybe instead of looking at class/income etc. we could identify the problem here as "parents who DNGAF" oh wait I'm bleeding into the "Judging" thread again :)

the iPad parents i referenced upthread are probably the wealthiest people i know

I also mention middle and upper class parents in my original booming post that I stand by

Can we maybe not get hung up on "you've strawmanned poor people", hating the rich, and doing a superior dance over what awesome parents we are on this thread?

oh yeah the one where you posted a link to a cartoon called "FAG BUYS MUSIC!" xp

you're totally not trolling

FAG BUYS MUSIC remains, hands down, the most accurate cultural artifact about the chest-puffing middle/upper-class tic of shaming people for paying for things, yes

I'm sorry there's not a Louie episode about it, so you understand better

Dan OTM.

If the problem is just shitty parents then there's no problem, because shitty disinterested parents have always existed and will always continue to exist.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/08/meet-the-tech-company-that-wants-to-make-you-even-more-addicted-to-your-phone/

uh Whiney it's not a choice between paying for something and getting sucked into PREGNANT ELSA HAS TEN PAC-MAN HEADS PRANK land. its not hard to have the thing just play Sesame Street videos for example

Can we maybe not get hung up on "you've strawmanned poor people", hating the rich, and doing a superior dance over what awesome parents we are on this thread?

hey it's all I've got these days

you think we have an economy that values that? you think we have an internet structure set up to funnel energies to google and youtube and facebook that values that?

It's all so much deeper than "you can get with this or you can get with that," which I tried to explain in my post, and I'm not gonna sit here and argue about it over and over

thx for Black Sheep ref

what the thread needed imo

these things seem true to me

-nasty and horrible media has always been a thing and plenty of it has been marketed to kids in shitty ways. at the same time it’s not particularly useful to say “well back in my day we had horror films, violent video games and goatse and facesofdeath.com and i turned out just fine!” well sure a lot of that media is horrible too but we can also acknowledge the very creepy way that this particular phenomenon exploits the way very young kids interact with and seek out online media.

-posts indicating that the creepiest thing about these videos is not necessarily their violence (for the most part) or whatever but more the fact they are bizarre lifeless inhuman simulacra seem right to me. i mean plenty of cartoon network shit, to my adult eyes, seems totally bizarre and wacky and often violent or grotesque but still seem pretty different from the stuff mentioned in these articles.

-posts that stated something along the lines of “well i don’t even remember any media i consumed before the age of 2!! how could it have impacted me? are fucking bonkers. isn’t it, like, a well-established fact of human development the 0-5-year-old mind has a plasticity that is not really matched at any other age? there are a million things we learn about reality, human relationships, communication, etc., that happen during those first few years of life. the notion that experiences that occur before long-term memory sets in won’t have an impact on you seems absurd on its face. a close friend of mine had traumatic memories of childhood sexual abuse suddenly emerge after being suppressed for 25 years - the abuse occurred from the time she was an infant through her early toddler years - and when the memories emerged she had realized that the trauma had been present her entire life and impacted her entire view of and relationship to sexuality. if it happened when she was 7-8 years old she obviously would’ve remembered it more clearly but the impact was already made and present her psyche even though it happened before her long-term memory set in.

-that said, it is there is definitely a moral panic "won't someone think of the children" thing happening in the discussion about these, it is easy to think of a 60 Minutes special on this crap that says a lot of the same things these medium articles do. we don’t fully know how much videos like these would actually have an impact on a developing brain. it would be extremely difficult prob impossible to find out. it doesn’t seem worth the risk though to wave it off though.

-there are many legitimate and illegitimate reasons that a parent might not be able to supervise 100% of their kids’ media consumption. just saying “come on parents, just don’t let you kids have their own phone or tablet” or “its not that hard, just pay attention to what your kids watch” is kind of like….i don’t know…. saying to teenagers “come on kids just don’t have sex, its not that hard to be abstinent”. plenty of kids have unfettered access to online media. it happens all the time for a bunch of different reasons. we can judge other parents and just say “stop doing that” or acknowledge that it will happen and try to deal with it in different ways. also i don't think it is that disingenuous to suggest that there might be parents who are so financially strapped that they are not able to supervise their kids' media intake. plenty of financially-strapped people have tablets and phones too.

DJP, I'm quick to acknowledge that I'm both rich (relatively speaking) and a lazy, crappy parent (at least some of the time). Didn't mean to sound like I was joining in the judge-fest.

As noted repeatedly on the other thread, I am pretty permissive of my children's screen use, and pretty unconcerned about what they take in. I don't vet every single video (though I do keep an eye out and periodically redirect).

Also, we don't have hard screen-time limits here, for a variety of reasons, with varying degrees of noble and ig-.

1. My son is nonverbal, and uses an iPad to communicate (not trying to milk this, just sayin'). He has an iPad in his hand literally all day at school, and a lot of the time at home as well. He actually uses it less at home, because he doesn't need it as much (we understand his signs and gestures very well).

2. There are some times when I'm just freaking exhausted. The crutch of the screen is so convenient and the relief is so welcome. I haven't slept well in a year and a half and every part of my body hurts. I'm trying to finish a work conference call and field three e-mails and I need to cook dinner and I just Can. Not. Deal. At those times, Jesus Christ kid, here, have a bleeping blooping thing and please leave Daddy alone for a fucking second.

3. Temperamentally, I know I am just not very good at tough love / limits / rules (especially rules that feel arbitrary). Basically, I'm a pushover and I know it. However, I know that setting boundaries is part of my job. My wife is much better at it, but I know it's not fair to make her always be the bad cop. Anyway, limit-setting is part of what I owe the children. I constantly have to work to overcome and/or mask this aspect of my personality and my parenting style.

Guilty as self-charged.

oh and marcos otm

its not hard to have the thing just play Sesame Street videos for example

you are perhaps overestimating the computer-literacy of the average person.

posts indicating that the creepiest thing about these videos is not necessarily their violence (for the most part) or whatever but more the fact they are bizarre lifeless inhuman simulacra seem right to me. i mean plenty of cartoon network shit, to my adult eyes, seems totally bizarre and wacky and often violent or grotesque but still seem pretty different from the stuff mentioned in these articles.

I really dunno about this part, much as I agree w/ the rest of your post - I mean, within the world of kid's animation Cartoon Network is a class act! Have you seen Foodfight or Rapsittie Street Kids? Those are closer to a point of comparison for these auto-generated vids, I think - and while they're certainly disturbing and fascinating in their own ways, I don't think they provoke the same reaction, because they don't have the actual terrible content.

Another thing I was thinking about was, like, how even when kids were/are watching the most bottom-barrel Clutch Cargo/He-Man/Paw Patrol whatever thing that just exists to sell toys and make ad revenue, there's still, like THINGS they can learn. Like how a story is told, or how emotions are translated, or how people interact with one another, or words they don't know or whatever. There's none of that in "a pair of hands opens an egg"

Well... They learn what's inside the egg.

lol

Don’t mess with He-Man, I’ll break you.

Another thing I was thinking about was, like, how even when kids were/are watching the most bottom-barrel Clutch Cargo/He-Man/Paw Patrol whatever thing that just exists to sell toys and make ad revenue, there's still, like THINGS they can learn. Like how a story is told, or how emotions are translated, or how people interact with one another, or words they don't know or whatever. There's none of that in "a pair of hands opens an egg"

The unpacking videos really bother me way more than just random weird stuff for the most part. It's what made me stop my kids from watching youtube. Young kids can learn so much and can be so creative and it feels like when they watch this stuff it just turns them into mindless zombies.

Anyway, lately I've been trying to get my daughter to watch more stuff on tv rather than directly on the tablet. I get to see what she's watching and for whatever reason it just seems to encourage more active/critical viewing.

There is a series of videos made by a guy who collects all of the Thomas and Friends trains where he lines them all up on the floor and names them. We stumbled across it on Youtube and it full-on MESMERIZED my kids to the point where I was thinking "is there a subliminal message here that I am missing? I am going to wake up to one of them gently sliding a knife into my eye while intoning 'Thomas. Edward. Henry. Gordon. James. Percy. Toby. (etc)'?"

I think they watched this video twice and afterward they knew the name of literally every single character that popped up on Thomas and Friends, including ones they hadn't seen before.

Interestingly, after watching this video they also could count to 10 without skipping numbers and started recognizing lowercase letters as well as uppercase letters. There are weird side-effects to everything they consume at a young age.

"unpacking the unpacking videos" is a doctoral thesis just waiting to happen.

you are perhaps overestimating the computer-literacy of the average person.

you don't really have to be. if you play 5-6 Sesame Street videos, that's all you're gonna get

man i fucking have this dumb "daddy fingers daddy fingers where are you" jingle in my head all the damn time now

genuinely sorry!

I have inflicted "Johnny Johnny/Yes Papa" onto multiple people and I don't feel one bit of remorse; if I'm suffering, everyone around me is going down, too.

It was tough going for me when I first saw it due to this story breaking but the adorable "drinking beer?" variant described in this thread has made it a welcome earworm.

There is a series of videos made by a guy who collects all of the Thomas and Friends trains where he lines them all up on the floor and names them. We stumbled across it on Youtube and it full-on MESMERIZED my kids to the point where I was thinking "is there a subliminal message here that I am missing? I am going to wake up to one of them gently sliding a knife into my eye while intoning 'Thomas. Edward. Henry. Gordon. James. Percy. Toby. (etc)'?"

I think they watched this video twice and afterward they knew the name of literally every single character that popped up on Thomas and Friends, including ones they hadn't seen before.

Interestingly, after watching this video they also could count to 10 without skipping numbers and started recognizing lowercase letters as well as uppercase letters. There are weird side-effects to everything they consume at a young age.

Yep yep here too. Btw you are going to be this guy when you're older :)
Mine can recognise all the various iterations even in real life - he saw a plastic version of one of them attached to a Thomas magazine and then another time in a thrift store saw the same one and told me which shop we saw it in originally.

Lol at people going 'well why don't they watch something else/do drawing' - he's 2, he knows what he wants and something else/drawing is not it. Of course I don't have to give him what he wants but that's different from 'just show him the properly franchised tv show that actually has decent story-telling that surely anyone sane would prefer' (sadly). He knows most alphabet/letters stuff which has entirely come from Youtube because I didn't try and teach him it so young and on the whole is pretty good at picking up stuff from the videos we do let him watch. But the lack of control I have over what appears next/on the sidebar etc is frustrating as hell. I have to check I'm there at the end of each video if I need to go and make dinner in a different room. His screen time has always been fairly limited but kids are brilliant at pushing these things ("Oh! I could watch a Thomas while you make tea! That's a good idea, isn't it mummy?").

He doesn't get US accents so calls e.g. 'Talking Gordon's Tender' "carcking Gordon's tender"

I work in a shoe shop and we often get in a lot of upset children who can't stop crying and screaming. I would say at least once a day I turn to my tablet, load up Youtube and type in Peppa Pig or Thomas The Tank Engine and give it to the child for five mins for distraction while we pull off the shoes and try to get the feet measured. At two or three years old they're old enough to start clicking on the sidebar recommendations, by accident or intent. I don't really have any young kids in my life orbit outside of work but I imagine this kind of thing happens when you take a toddler to the doctor or for a haircut or any new, stressful situation where the person who is about to cause the child stress will panic and worry and use Youtube as a source of relief and distraction. So it isn't just "parents should give their child a colouring book" - screens are out there in the wild. I try to be careful and encourage my staff to be too - one time we had a very close encounter when someone accidentally loaded up Thomas The Dank Engine and sat in front of a child. This stuff is scary.

seems like it would be easier and safer to install the nickjr app, pbskids app, or just the youtube kids app. it would require far less vigilance. to be really safe, just download a few innocuous videos and put the tablet in airplane mode so they don't inadvertently browse to something else.

also, do you ask parents if it's okay first?

I went to do dinner last night with some family including my two nieces. I made a vague comment about YouTube clamping down on kids content, and my 13-year-old niece, who has a tendency for browsing inappropriate content was immediately like "oh you mean pregnant Elsa and Spiderman?"

never heard of it before but lol @ "Thomas the Dank Engine"

Thomas the Dank Engine was an early discovery that made me go “welp the internet is annoying and terrible”

was ILX the next discovery that led to that deduction?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLJM5lHwql0

the tablets are work-provided and so you can't really do things like install and modify apps unfortunately. And we need them to be connected fully cos we use them to eg check other stores stock levels. We always ask the parents and make it clear what we're doing and we've never had any issues with it - most parents are just relieved we have something to help placate. A lot of parents will beat us to it and have their phone on Youtube when they arrive too. We have a young boy who regularly comes in who is autistic and used to really struggle with the experience, but once his mother told me that he loves the London Underground we always make sure to have a video of the trains loaded up for him to watch when he sits down, and it's so much less stressful - for him, for his mother and for us.

I mean, generally it's a useful tool. But sometimes you see those sticky fingers reaching into the sidebar. In my branch I don't let the guys use Youtube for anything other than this and we don't log in or anything, but I've heard horror stories from other shops where people have been using the tablets to stream music via Youtube and then the recommendations have been explicit and innappropriate.

boxedjoy, okay, if you can't install apps, I would note that a tablet that can browse to YouTube.com can also browse to:

http://pbskids.org/video/ (Dinosaur Train, Curious George, Thomas)

http://www.nickjr.com/videos/ (Paw Patrol, Peppa Pig, Bubble Guppies)

http://disneyjunior.disney.com/video (Mickey Mouse, Handy Manny, Octonauts)

As well as

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/videos/
https://jr.brainpop.com/
https://www.wbkidsgo.com

Honestly some folx itt view the options as:

1. Eternal hawk-eyed vigilance
2. Nonstop pregnant Elsa beheadings

When that simply isn't the case. Look, I know YouTube is a popular and familiar interface but it's not the only path to children's entertainment.

this is great stuff thank you so much! As I only encounter kids through work and not in my direct real life this stuff often passes me by (I still don't get what actually happens in Paw Patrol) so I would never have thought to look at these sources, this is so useful and appreciated.

Buzzfeed has been investigating the videos with staged or otherwise abuse of kids

Content warning here: there are screen grabs from the videos in the post

https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/youtube-is-addressing-its-massive-child-exploitation-problem

how the hell do these get so many views? is this really just kids letting their curiosity get the best of them, clicking a scary-looking video, and then falling into the algorithm?

bots

yea but if it's a bot ring, why even bother making a video like this at all? surely there's a way to abuse YouTube's algorithms that doesn't involve having to film stuff like this

Okay then how about all the curious adults who have been reading about OMG Horrid Kid YouTubes for the last several weeks

More here:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/youtubers-made-hundreds-of-thousands-off-of-bizarre-and

on the one hand it sucks that YouTube's takedown/demonitization protocol is so arbitrary. if Baby Alive poop explosion videos are no longer permissible, then YouTube should give pooptubers explicit feedback re: why their content is being deleted (and update its policy to reflect its new standards) rather than leaving them guessing as to what they've done wrong.

The father of two, who asked to use a pseudonym for fear of retaliation from YouTube, left a job with a six-figure salary to make YouTube videos of his young kids.

---

Davey Orgill, who left his job to make superhero parody videos that initially featured his kids, said that his channel “Kids Try,” had 2 million subscribers when it was shut down around Thanksgiving.

but on the other hand it's hard to feel too much pity for parents who are irresponsible enough to quit their jobs to focus on their "YouTube careers". I'm pretty sure 99% of these YouTubers aren't actively catering to pedophiles/fetishists, but I'm also pretty sure 99% of them are incapable of putting the best interests of their children ahead of their own risky business ventures. the defenses in that article basically amount to "I don't abuse my kids, I just exploit them for clicks!" which is decidedly nagl unless your standards for parenting are abysmally low.

my 3-year-old niece spends a ton of time on the iPad, but I can't come up with a way to bring up these issues with my sister without coming off as a alarmist/paranoiac ("oh hey so there's this huge expose about youtube kids on medium.com. it's in Dutch but you can get the gist of it just by looking at the pictures. you might want to ignore the spooky numbers stations stuff toward the end tho")

the last time I babysat her, she was watching a bunch of videos about a girl who travels around the world trying to find a place to pee. in retrospect I was afraid it might be some kideodrome shit, but apparently it's a Disney Junior series so nvm

Booming posts. It's what grates the most, reading that buzzfeed thing:

but I'm also pretty sure 99% of them are incapable of putting the best interests of their children ahead of their own risky business ventures.

The complete lack of self-reflection, heck even second guessing their motives, from these makers is pretty staggering. The shrugging "hey we just fed the algorithm to make a good buck; it's youtube not updating their codes of conduct or sending an email that's the real problem here" is def nagl. (this could be because buzzfeed decidedly aimed at the bzznzz angle here, which is terrible reporting imo).

In a broader sense: yt did create a monster. But it's nothing to do with "algorithm", which makes it unjustly sound 'savvy'; it becomes an excuse "it's the AI mang, we just feed it"). I expect this defense to be called to the stand many more times in the near future. But it's not the algorithm that is to blame, it's the jekyll and hide's who resurrect it. It's not a monster we don't know yet. The monster is called capitalism. YT will go as far as it cynically can to cash money. Don't expect their users to be any different.

I love how much of this thread is 'this is viscerally terrifying' "actually it's fine" 'how will we protect our children' "its not even hard to do"

haha I'm glad you saw this, some classic ILX dynamics going on earlier for sure

so weird how that Buzzfeed article is totally sympathetic to those poor YT bloggers making 10K+ a month with their fucked up videos, maybe they should have saved some of that money? sure YT could be clearer, but man the tone really grates on me there

Hoos, all those things are true simultaneously.

but I'm also pretty sure 99% of them are incapable of putting the best interests of their children ahead of their own risky business ventures.

SO MUCH of this going on in much more squeaky clean corners of YouTube, too.

kind of a diff issue but everyone should be much more cautious and strict about putting images of their kids onto social media platforms, period

https://privacysos.org/blog/the-kids-arent-alright-with-you-putting-their-photos-online/

https://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2016/03/08/dont-post-about-me-on-social-media-children-say/

they can't and don't consent to having an exhaustive gallery of themselves stored in places they can't control

i mean, the only thing i *like* about FB is pics of other people's kids, but this is something that worries me!

“We saw channels grow to five to ten times our size in a matter of weeks or several months, all because the algorithm was out of control and irresponsible,” he said. “All creators knew this was happening and started trying to integrate trends into their content. How can anyone blame them?"

for fucks sake

they can't and don't consent to having an exhaustive gallery of themselves stored in places they can't control

i used to find it hard to believe that people didn't understand this but then i heard about farhad manjoo and his reasons for installing surveillance cameras to record everything that happens in the common areas of his house. I finally realized that some (many?) people can't see past their own blinders when it comes to images/having one's image captured/being on or off camera.

i've put a few photos of my kids on insta. it's not "exhaustive" just a few nice shots. they know about it and are stoked actually. it makes them feel noticed and powerful. i haven't thought about it too much but if their feelings change and they want me to take them down i assume we'll have a conversation about it and i'll take them down.

Yeah, that's a conversation I need to have with my kids too.

I guess around 15% of my (private) IG is photos of my daughters, and around a third of my Flickr stream (those albums are restricted to Friends & Family). I occasionally post pics of them on FB (again, "Friends" only). Back in the days when I would actually tweet (obv public), it was often (fairly oblique, non-specific, hopefully funny) kids-said-and-did-stuff. *That's* the stuff they could be embarrassed about, I guess, rather than the 2yo-face-full-of-pesto pics.

I've also posted photos and anecdotes in this place, and you're all lunatics, so that's bad.

They know Daddy is always going to have a camera at the ready, and they're ok with that, but they should have more (some!) say in what I do with the results.

I use a private smugmug website to give family/friends access, to avoid posting pictures on social media. Still I throw a few highlights on my private insta. Never posted a picture of my child on facebook.

There are a few pics of my son I've put on FB, but increasingly fewer. They're pretty much all flattering to him, I think. But if he wants them down in later years there'll be no argument from me. A small set are private on Flickr for family members; all the rest are shared privately via the iOS photos app so that relatives can keep in touch.

I've mostly gone analogue recently too, so some have been sent in the post, classic-style

With my kids, I've definitely found that starting at about age 4, they are old enough to have a basic understanding of what social media is. We ask before putting any of their pictures up (they often say "no"). Even then, it's never public.

We share stuff with relatives/friends through google photos.

yesterday in work a family came in and the child already had their mother's phone in their hand and I could see they were watching a creepy Pregnant Elsa With Spiderman video and I was torn between wanting to watch the video with them in fascination and wanting to tell the parents to actually look at what's happening on the screen

everyone like 5 months ago: the fact that kids youtube is literally full of bizarre algorithm-made uncanny valley kids videos is a nightmare and probably fucking with children's psyche
everyone currently: johnny doo doo doo doo doo doo doo johnny doo doo doo doo doo doo doo joh

— baby goku (@grillinkrillin) August 28, 2018

related content

https://jezebel.com/would-you-have-sex-with-johny-johny-yes-papa-1828635224

this is the video that's driving everyone nuts. for some reason it's off YouTube

https://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/x6sm5v3

The "for some reason" is that YT finally grasped that there was a problem and removed/kid-blocked a lot of the worst videos.

other than driving people insane idk what the issue with this one was

giving kids brainworms that disturb grown adults

there's a corollary to this sort of thing in games: https://heterogenoustasks.wordpress.com/2018/05/02/caregiver-fantasy/

(specifically the Elsa part)

ITS BACK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXspEaYCrc4

where did this place in our tracks poll

thanks

https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/psychiatrists-report-mass-outbreak-of-sociogenic-illness-spread-via-social-media-videos/

Yeah, it's interesting, I've seen some Twitter chat about it - you can download the actual paper here https://academic.oup.com/brain/advance-article/doi/10.1093/brain/awab316/6356504

So let's talk about Skibidi Toilet. Anyone else have kids heavily into this?

My kid is almost 18 now so no, but I had to look this up

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skibidi_Toilet

why is the internet filled with dumb shit like this, I do not know. this stuff is obv intentionaly being made by an actual person unlike some of the things above which appeared to have been randomly generated nonsense, which is almost worse.

I don't have kids but I've watched a few Skibidi Toilet videos. It's funny! Completely juvenile, pointless and random, yes, but sometimes you can allow yourself to enjoy a puerile absurdity. I definitely get why kids like it.

I am not anti-Skibidi Toilet per se, enjoyed the absurdity of the first 10 or so videos, just lost interest when it stopped being funny and started building lore. Kids are more into it than ever but I have no idea what is going on now.

actually this is a pretty good thread for this work of bona fide genius which i've been hitherto unable to find an ilx home for

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci3f_BqQk-A

I am just assuming it will go the way of Baby Shark and Johnny Johnny Yes Papa.

Hadn't heard of this before but watching a few videos I can totally see the appeal of this

Yeah, it's like Usavich for a new generation. The absurdity of the concept aside, it's downright explicable compared to a lot of the newfangled cultural obsessions that baffle my aging brain.

I don't find it especially baffling - just a continuation of "weird internet stuff" that's been going on for ages now

Whereas I recently stumbled upon a random Roblox video and it pretty much fried my cortex

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ydd9Z4p8mM

Nope, not a clue

Kids ask me for Skibidi Toilet stuff at my job everyday, it's... weird

Kids ask me for Skibidi Toilet stuff at my job everyday, it's... weird

Work at the Kideo shop

When my kids started talking about Skibidi Toilet, I thought it was a callback to this video I kept showing them when they were far too young for it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDFBTdToRmw

first thing I thought of too! it made me rewatch it and now I love it even more so c'mon "Skibidi Toilet" is not all bad