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

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.