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

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.