Slashdot Mirror


'Something Is Wrong On the Internet' (medium.com)

"Someone or something or some combination of people and things is using YouTube to systematically frighten, traumatize, and abuse children, automatically and at scale, and it forces me to question my own beliefs about the internet, at every level," writes James Bridle. From the article: To begin: Kid's YouTube is definitely and markedly weird. I've been aware of its weirdness for some time. Last year, there were a number of articles posted about the Surprise Egg craze. Surprise Eggs videos depict, often at excruciating length, the process of unwrapping Kinder and other egg toys. That's it, but kids are captivated by them. There are thousands and thousands of these videos and thousands and thousands, if not millions, of children watching them. [...] What I find somewhat disturbing about the proliferation of even (relatively) normal kids videos is the impossibility of determining the degree of automation which is at work here; how to parse out the gap between human and machine. The New York Times, last week: Parents and children have flocked to Google-owned YouTube Kids since it was introduced in early 2015. The app's more than 11 million weekly viewers are drawn in by its seemingly infinite supply of clips, including those from popular shows by Disney and Nickelodeon, and the knowledge that the app is supposed to contain only child-friendly content that has been automatically filtered from the main YouTube site. But the app contains dark corners, too, as videos that are disturbing for children slip past its filters, either by mistake or because bad actors have found ways to fool the YouTube Kids algorithms. In recent months, parents like Ms. Burns have complained that their children have been shown videos with well-known characters in violent or lewd situations and other clips with disturbing imagery, sometimes set to nursery rhymes.

3 of 365 comments (clear)

  1. What a terrible headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Something is wrong on the Internet" does not immediately translate to "so let me tell you about these absolutely bizarre and potentially illegal Youtube videos."

  2. disturbing imagery, sometimes set to nursery rhym by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1, Informative
    Many nursery rhymes have gory origins.

    Ring around a rosie, is supposed to be an allegory of the black death.

    Some more such stuff

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  3. An example by Harlequin80 · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is a video where gentle music plays and cutesy version of my little ponies slide across the screen into a box full of cotton wool. That is the original version. Goes for about 2 minutes. Sounds like torture when described like that but the kids liked it.

    Someone released a version where about 90 seconds in the box of cotton wool is replaced with a box of nails and the pony is eviscerated by them. There is also a change in the audio to a distorted "Oh Fuck". And it then goes back to the cutesy version.

    No other reason to do that then to get past the automated filters and mess with little kids.