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.
"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."
quit showing your kids stuff you don't like, you are the parent and are responsible for what they consume you dink
I use my magnifier turned backwards to read it.
If that is what happened, then please tell me the URLs, it was one of my favourite shows!
(Here is some older example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... )
It's almost like some one is profiting from the effects of these attacks our childrens' minds. Like some one wants people to grow up and be triggered into hyperactivity by certain cues from screaming colors and sounds.
*glances at media-driven political feud*
I wonder why???????
https://xkcd.com/386/
No, this man makes a living programmatically cutting and pasting SEO-optimized terms, and he has enough actual unwrapping video that it bypasses the AI-optimized content filters.
The only thing wrong with the Internet is that AdTech/BigData/AttentionEconomy's business model of "write a paper/get-VC-funding/get-acquihired about how to use AI to automatically select content that's safe for the target audience but doesn't involve Google hiring thousands of human beings to curate the content" involves, well, writing clever papers.
Writing clever papers about automating content detection/rating may be more fun than solving the hard AI problem, but doesn't, umm, actually solve the hard AI problem of determining when a vlogger is (a) real, (b) spamming, or (c) trolling..
Turn it off, make your kid go outside. Voila.
As a fellow taxpayer, I demand the state do something about people having more children than they have the time and resources to raise into responsible adults themselves.
Boohoo, a kid unfriendly southpark-esc satire slipped through an AI filter: The end of the internet is not nigh, this is a product issue: Google's kiddy product. Author: try applying your logic to tangible goods: a kiddy toy was found to have sharp edges - something is fundamentally wrong with the manufacturing industry.
Remember when reading comic books and listening to rock and roll music made us all worship Satan? Good times.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
With Parents who demand someone else watch and monitor their child's playtime activity? Instead of playing, the parents let the kids watch video's that the parents have not even watched once? That technology is good, but REAL interactions are the BEST? Yeah, something IS wrong indeed
You keep going until you die..."Me".
Next thing you know they'll be on Slashdot and click a link to goatse!
So you are creating a Youtube site/app for Kids and are using _algorithms_ to keep the kids safe from bad content? Er, Google... how many tens of Billion dollars does your company have in its coffers? Is it so bloody hard to hire 500 people whose job it is to watch the videos and determine whether they are suitable for kids?
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
You saw wrong. The President is not an orangutan, orangutans are intelligent creatures.
If you look closely at his tiny hands, you can see him signing "Your food is destroying my home." over and over.
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
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.
Regardless of the merits of the detailed examples, a lot of the article just struct me as saying, "If it's not from Disney you can't trust it!" Never mind your local children book authors! They may be up to something no good! CONSUME ONLY DISNEY.
Any public-submission-based site is going to have trolls, period. It's the Internet Way, not a conspiracy. Such a service has 3 choices:
1. Live with a certain percentage of troll content and gags
2. Have an expensive scrubber army to check everything
3. Don't allow public submissions
Table-ized A.I.
On the contrary, this only strengthens my beliefs about the internet. Like all the rest of it, at the very root is some man jacking off.
... so it is OK for me to not let my kids have smart phones and for me to police their internet usage?
Because the rest of the time that supposedly makes us backward freaks.
HA HA HA OH WOW!!
Can you imagine the trauma stories that would come out of that office? Have you ever actually sat and watched legit children's programming? I doubt the smut-porn police would last more than a week.
Seriously though, if you replace the babysitter with a computer, your gonna get trolled. EVERY. TIME.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Or, come on, at least offer an whitelist option on the Youtube Kids app?
They're your kids. Not mine. And neither I, nor "the internet", nor even a school, is responsible for raising them. You are. If you cannot be assed to take care of your kids, use rubbers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The internet is like going outside it has war, killers, morons, sex, violence.
And it should stay that way, as it should reflect all humans in this planet, not just middle class parents.
The problem is ppl like you that think the internet could replace you as a parent.
What you should do is to filter what your kind kids see, by seeing it 1st. In the same way you don't send you kid alone to the cinema. And while you do that, try to make your kids to think about what they are, in order to grow a strong personality and be able to face the internet and the street and a younger age.
They don't need to pay people. They can allow users to vote up the videos and then allow other users to meta-moderate the votes. In exchange, they can hand out points which will eventually (maybe) be worth something. Google does this now with Google Contribute.
The Internet has been twisted and subverted from being the font of information and a vastly useful tool for humanity in general, into something driven by greed and the very worst that humanity has to offer -- and there's many orders of magnitude more people in the world interested in keeping it that way (and making it more so) than there are people who want to fix the problems. As-is, the Internet may become something not worth having. At current you can ignore the worst of it, but if it reaches the point where the negativity and greed are pushing their way into everything, then it may be time to say good-bye to it.
I watch all my kid's shows. As a result, I tend to pick interesting ones with story lines and morals instead of bright colors and songs. I like Blue's Clues, Tumbleleaf, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, (and for an acid trip) Sarah and duck.
I think a lot of commentators are missing the point of the original article. The fact that kids might see somewhat inappropriate videos is just a symptom of the underlying problem.
The problem is that the information we see and content we view is increasingly the result of the interactions of various algorithms. You see this in the way Google inadvertently promotes conspiracy theories. The content itself starts to become more and more automated as every video or article just ends up being a reconfiguration of popular keywords. I suppose the dystopic end-game if this were in an episode of Black Mirror would have everyone completely disassociated from reality as all information they consume is simply generated and and pushed out to them by various bots interacting.
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.
I agree, there is something wrong with the internet, but what is wrong with it, is not what you think it is.
Backyardigans was a favorite at our place for exactly this reason, it didn't make us want to run away screaming.
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
I used to work in a public library in one of the worst neighbourhoods in my city. We had a small kids section with the usual selection of picture books, etc. Pretty regularly I would have to go through the books to remove the wildly inappropriate drawings that one or more twisted individuals had inserted between the pages. Can't see this YouTube thing as anything really different, except of course the scale is so much bigger, the imagery is even more frightening, it's harder to detect, and there isn't anyone monitoring for it ... OK, maybe it is a bit different.
I don't think this was unheard of in other libraries either; in fact I seem to recall a Seinfeld episode where the practice was alluded to.
As a taxpayer, I demand the State does something about this internet.
Why would you say 'taxpayer'? It has no relationship to citizenship...
Both citizens and immigrants rely on services provided by the government, and taxation funds these services.
You must be new. Welcome to the Internet.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
However, Netflix and Amazon have a pretty high bar on quality for content to get on there.
Anyone with a bank account and a tax ID can upload video to Amazon Video Direct, so long as it's not obscene, not infringing, professionally produced, captioned, 720p or 1080p, and not high motion. What "pretty high bar" are you referring to?
Would you let your kids out in the red light district by themselves on a Friday night? No? Well...WTF are you using the internet as a substitute for parenting then? Yes? WTF were you not sterilized by court order?
That might be because "Autonomous sensory meridian response" is not experienced by the vast majority of people, and has little scientific evidence to indicate its existence as a specific phenomenon. And those who claim to experience ASMR are certainly even less present amongst Slashdot readers.
Big company decides that bots are "good enough". They aren't. That's all this is. As bad as it is to sit your kids in front of the old fashioned tube, as much as you might complain about the FCC, there was pretty much zero chance that we were going to see Oscar, Big Bird, and the Count going at it in a 3-way. That's because real human adults were in charge, and were paid what they were worth. The Internet isn't broken. A bunch of greedy pigs just paid some cheap coders far less to create something much less safe, then a bunch of lazy parents sat their kids down in front of it. The results were predictable.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Understatement of the millennium.
Snopes and some other "experts" say it's not about the black death. I just learned this earlier today... man the matrix i mean internet is weird like that.
https://www.snopes.com/languag...
Is it so bloody hard to hire 500 people whose job it is to watch the videos and determine whether they are suitable for kids?
Well, I mean, the government only lets them import so main H-1B workers every year...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
HR Pufnstuf was the best kids show.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
YouTube is going nuts thought policing conservatives while this kind of garbage intended for kids gets right by? Yes, I watched some of the videos in question, and they are disturbing. I find it absolutely astounding that Google\YouTube puts human effort into censoring political material for adults, and then turns around and says it's up to adults to police the kids section. What the actual fuck?
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Whitelist, not blacklist.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
If you're going to let your children watch youtube unattended, you'll have to first sit them down and give them a talk about the dangers of lighting your own farts. Maybe make them watch a video of someone pooping their pants while trying. It's for their own good.
Nothing is wrong with the internet. But I've long held the belief that something is wrong with people.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
I'm pretty sure that's what they're referring to, is probably porn type material with what normally are children's characters, or story-lines with lewdness added.
And while I'm the type of person who thinks if something someone else enjoys isn't hurting anything, then fine. But I think some of this type of material is banned in some countries, and perhaps this is why, because potential for accidental exposure for children. There's some insane shit out there that you just can't unsee once you've seen it. And I'm saying that as an adult. I can't hardly imagine the sorts of nightmares or other psychological harm some material could do to a child.
So the content-type crossover is definitely there, and the filtering needs work, or YouTube needs work on overall permitted videos. I dunno, it's a complicated problem because there's an audience for that type of content, and that's not wrong, but keeping it out of reach of children, yeah, it's just not so easy. Mostly cuz, well, a pretty large part of the internet's usage is pornographic in nature. Some say the pornographic stuff is what got the internet really rolling in the mid 90's. So it's kinda hard to filter out ALL of it, cuz it's frickin everywhere.
Things I found on youtube kids that should not have been there
1) a cartoon promoting Islam as the only religion and all other religions as false.
2) tons of Peppa Pig satires that were not suitable for kids.
3) parents getting around child labor laws by clearly working their kids long hours doing videos for profit.
4) kids providing a bad example for my kid.
I would recommend every parent not allow their kids access to it.
It can't be trusted so I uninstalled the app and made my own playlists.
...you mean I can't just plop my kid in a chair, throw my ipad at them and tell them to watch youtube until I'm ready to deal with them?
Well, fuck, why didn't anyone tell me that BEFORE I started producing womb fruit?
-Styopa
are responsible for this.
In Soviet Russia, the Internet Tubes You!
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
In a country where you can keep your "children" on your health insurance until they're 25, I have to ask if we're talking about young children or all children. There are seemingly millions of "children" over the age of 18 who are scared of their own shadow. Everything startles, offends, and scares them. They're incapable of handling any stressful situations . . . . like cooking their own meals, changing a flat tire, encountering opinions that are opposite from their own, etc.. I wonder who ties their shoes before they leave the house.
Yes, I'm being a little bit humorous at the expense of the younger generation. But some of the problems we see with them probably started when they were young children with helicopter parents. Hey, everybody gets a trophy!!
Nobody can "give" you self-esteem. That's why it's called SELF-esteem. Get a few little bumps and bruises to your body and ego while you're young, and you can handle the much larger ones when you grow up.
I can't tell you how many times I read a magazine, a book, or watched a tv show or a movie growing up that my parents didn't authorize in-advance. I don't think children are expected to have free-reign over all of youtube kids. Any parent that thinks someone else can censor content for their own children is just a terrible parent. Your child has specifics. Your family has specifics. Your own parenting style has specifics. They are your children, and your specifics.
We already know that the internet is a bad place for children. This is something that people know right? Might as well send the kids off to play in a playground in the middle of a minefield.
...nowt stranger than folk. Don't let yer kids near the interwebs, parents.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
Ethan Bradbury and his brother made about half of them and some creepy German guy made the other half. This is not news. The fact that Youtube STILL refuses to get rid of clones of their type of content after they both were restricted or banned definitely is news though. They're SO incompetent and clueless and lean on their idiotic and useless AI bot to find stuff like this.
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.
Maybe parents like Ms. Burns should actually watch their kids instead of just handing them a fucking tablet.
This sort of behaviour plays into the hands of the authoritarians who want to 'clamp down' on the internet. If we do not find a way to self regulate the worst extremes, regulation will be forced up us.
In the UK we've seen Amanda Rudd, the Home Secretary (similar to US Homeland Security), demand backdoor access to to end-to-end encryption.
It's filled with people. Obligatory Dilbert.
We'll make great pets
Awhile back I had an idea for a YouTube Whitelist application. The parent would choose which YouTube channels were appropriate for their kids. The kids, then, could watch any of the videos on these channels. I came up with this after my kids - who love watching videos of people playing video games - stumbled upon some videos that weren't appropriate. (Nothing too horrible, luckily. Just foul language that I didn't want them imitating.) Unfortunately, I never got the chance to work on this. If someone else wants to take the idea and run with it, go for it.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
It's to be expected, but guess we're growing up. When it's not simply our "childhood" under threat, but our children, it's not funny anymore.
Well, I think both the baby boomers and the GenX have gone senile so the millennials through no fault of their own are less capable to face difficulties in life.
The Han Solo story illustrates this perfectly. Lucas commented that he never expected so much outrage for changing that scene. "If people want Han Solo to be murderer (!?!?!?) then so be it".
Now wait a minute! What you say is that our children must be taught that if they have a professional murderer pointing a gun at them from 1m who has stated already that he wants to kill you (or take the money which from HS point of view is the same, if he had the money) and you have this one in a billion chance to come on top you should not take it because it is "bad" or "immoral"? What kind of retarded message is that? If I had children I would not want them to listen to senile uncle Lucas....
That's what I've been doing so far. In fact I don't even let my kid on the internet, his tablet doesn't have access, is in airplane mode, and anything I want him to see I preview and download for offline viewing.
Twinstiq, game news
The videos containing human actors are definitely not auto generated.
Twinstiq, game news
That it is easy to draw horror-scenes in syrupy sweet comic style has been known for long enough, a nice example of this is "Happy tree friends". Obviously such and similar content found it's way to the internet, including youtube.
And all this lengthy talk about "delamination of brand and content" indicates, that the author obviously slept through about two decades of availability for all kinds of combinations between well known comic characters with porn, splatter and whatnot.
And wohoo, algorithms can be tricked and there will always be "pranksters" to do that, see what they did to Microsofts Tay AI.
The internet is no Nursery. Being induced to follow a link to tubgirl or goatse (don't search for that if you haven't seen it, just trust me that you don't want to go down that road, what has been seen can not be unseen, you have been warned) is an instructive if unpleasant (for adults) experience. Applying small world theory / Six degrees of separation a few clicks should get you from (m)any place(s) in the internet to (almost) anywhere else. Sure, you can build a safe cul-de-sac, but only if you control all the exits and all the content that gets in it. The moment one starts from some google search all bets are off.
So don't let your five year old roam the internet unattended, you wouldn't let that kid stumble through some typical metropolis at night either.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Golly gee whiz, Mommy thought she could just leave little Declan and Aria parked at the computer for a few hours unsupervised so she could have a little Happy Juice and watch her soaps. But no, apparently there are 'disturbing' videos on YouTube. Did someone mention evolution?
This is an outrage! Something should be done! By someone who's not me!
Is it so bloody hard to hire 500 people whose job it is to watch the videos and determine whether they are suitable for kids?
How do they determine what's suitable for kids though? For instance, if cartoons show adult women without coverings on their heads, that's completely unsuitable and pornographic, according to some people. Or if cartoons show kids celebrating Halloween, that's teaching them to worship satan according to other people.
OK, what's wrong with the internet is way too much ads and popups everywhere, but this?! I was expecting something completely different. This is more of a LOL than a serious issue.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti