YouTube Kids Has Videos on How Reptilians Rule the World, Moon Landing Was Fake (gizmodo.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTube Kids, the supposedly child-friendly version of YouTube that's been shown to often play host to troves of slop content and disturbing videos, apparently was showing videos from British conspiracy theorist David Icke, a guy who believes reptilian aliens secretly control the world and are responsible for the Holocaust. According to a Saturday report in Business Insider, searching for the term "UFO" on YouTube kids turned up a video purporting "to show a UFO shooting at a chemtrail." The suggested followups for that video featured a number of Icke's clips, including a nearly five-hour lecture on how aliens built the pyramids and secretly run the planet through a ruling class extraterrestrial-human hybrids. The video also delves into a number of other conspiracy theories, including claims Freemasons indulge in human sacrifice and President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by his own government.

According to Business Insider, "Two other conspiracy theory videos by Icke appeared in the related videos, meaning it was easy for children to quickly go from watching relatively innocent videos about toys to conspiracy content." Searching for the term "moon landing" also resulted in a number of conspiratorial videos emerging, including one making the claim that CERN's Large Hadron Collider had opened a portal to another world that an unfortunate employee then vanished in.

Comments

Demonetization

[SmaryJerry]

I thought YouTube had already turned their whole website into YouTube Kids by demonetizing anything for adults.

Re:Demonetization

[Anonymous Coward]

It may come as a surprise to you, but a 'log' of adults are interested in things besides the progressive-left's neo-marxist propaganda.

Re:Demonetization

[Z00L00K]

Especially the gun related channels - even if most of them are actually pretty informative, like "forgotten weapons".

Another channel that I do follow is bosnianbill.

Re: Demonetization

[MightyYar]

First let's take a step back - why should anything be protected by copyright in the first place? The answer is of course that we want to encourage people to create things. All the rules should pretty much follow from there: will this usage impact the incentive to create in some significant way? As an example, creating a video where you compare the beats in two songs, playing a small sample from each song, has zero commercial impact one way or another on the value of the two songs. The creators will continue to create.

So don't ask, "Why should x be allowed to use x's work?"

Ask, "Why should our government expend time and money protecting x's work?"

Please don't take these down

[thinkwaitfast]

they are very entertaining. The best(worst) are the contrail conspiracies.

Re:Please don't take these down

[AmiMoJo]

It's a really tricky one because children don't have the mental tools to realize that these videos are outlandish conspiracy theories and not credible. The marketplace of ideas is great but only if the buyers are informed and capable of making good decisions.

That's why religions put so much emphasis on indoctrinating kids. Try convincing an adult that there is an invisible man pulling all the strings who will torture you for eternity if you don't obey his seemingly arbitrary rules.

Someone will probably blame the parents, which is valid but also impractical. Like TV, YouTube is probably going to have to be the responsible babysitter.

Kids search for term, get videos

[I'm New Around Here]

Why shouldn't the kids see these videos? It's not like it's porn or bloody murder. So they get to see a kook, and their parents get a lot of questions for a week.

Re:Reptilians did the holocaust?

[Killall -9 Bash]

You seriously are comparing dictatorships and other almost-totalitarian regimes to a modern democracy?

Which one is the democracy?

Freedom of speech does not equal the privilege to insult others at will.

That's pretty much exactly what the fuck it is. Dumbass. No, really. The first amendment exists because King George didn't like colonists talking smack about him, and used military force to suppress opinions. Maybe you think that political speech is different than calling you a dumbass. That's because you're a dumbass. King Dumbass, in fact..... And I don't quite like the royal decrees you've made concerning what I may or may not say.

There is such thing as a mature discussion.

You're new to the Internets, I see.