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

@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.