'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.

Comments

Re:What a terrible headline

[angel'o'sphere]

Well,
kids (depending on age) are not scared by macabre jokes/cartoons.

When I grew up we had a joke type called 'alle Kinder', aka 'all children', sorry I can not make perfect rhymes, as I lack knowledge about english names, but I try:

All the children are watching the burning house,
But not _Klaus_ (should rhyme with house)
he looks out of the window (in german it would rhyme with house: 'er schaut raus')

All the children are up to the neck in mud/swamp
but not Porter,
he is shorter.

All the children watch the burning car
just not Kell
he is in the seat belt.

I don't recall anyone getting psychological problems from such jokes ... but well, we are a tough generation! (*flex*)

I really wish that YouTube did this differently

[Anonymous Coward]

If YouTube would put the hosting channel into the URL I could filter based on that.

I don't know how many times I let my son watch some Etholabs video and then came back and he had clicked on another Minecraft video from someone that was... less in control of their vocabulary.

If I could have white-listed YouTube.com/Ethoslab instead of YouTube.com, I could have prevented that, but they don't include the channel in the URL so I can't.

Re:What a terrible headline

[cayenne8]

Children tend to have a hard time distinguishing fantasy from reality. Usually they mistake unreal things for real but occasionally they mistake real things for unreal.

Then I guess today's children are getting more stupid with every generation somehow.

I grew up in the days of cartoons every afternoon and Saturday all morning....in the days of NON- censored Loony Tunes.....I knew full well at the youngest age I have memories that cartoon violence was different than reality.

I knew that the anvil that hit Wily Coyote was not real and would kill a real person or animal.

Hell, I remember one old Bugs Bunny cartoon....where he saw Elmer asleep against a tree...and Bugs whipped out a bottle of sleeping pills, labeled "Take Deeze and Dose"....gulped them down and fell asleep there too so he could enter Elmers dream and mess with him there.

I saw this same cartoon not long back...and that part with the sleeping pills? It was fucking edited OUT?!?!

Seriously? We can't let kids see that anymore? The snowflakes are now too sensitive, and can't know cartoon from reality?

Ugh....