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

The Internet - the meme machine

[Camel Pilot]

In the 90's I once heard someone boast that the Internet is the place where religions go to die...

Little did he know that the Internet is where even more bizarre and unsustainable ideas such as Flat Earth and Lizard rulers go to get new life and willing meme hosts.

That's Icke

[PopeRatzo]

The difference between the "alternative" and conspiracy media in the UK and the US outlets like Infowars is that David Icke actually challenges the prevailing political power structure, where Infowars supports and is used by the prevailing political power structure.

This is a complete reversal for conspiracy media in the United States. Until very recently, it was always hostile to those in power. Today, it is the tool of those in power.

Re:Please don't take these down

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

In 10 years, they may be the only service around anymore. Copyright holders are pushing to overturn the DMCA stuff that lets services not be held responsible for copyright violations as long as they take down such when notified, in a timely manner.

This helped the Internet and its companies grow explosively in the US. Only the giants will be able to provide anymore if this is repealed.

Re:Really?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

They could do the same thing the ancient Greeks did to prove the world was round -- observe the shadow of the Earth on the moon during a lunar eclipse is always round. The only object that projects a round shadow regardless of its angle is a ball.

Then if they like, they could measure the angle of a stick's shadow at noon on the same day, in two places hundreds of miles away, north and south. They will be different angles and you can calculate the size of tbe Earth-as-ball.

Then, knowing how big the Earth is, they can calculate the size of the moon based on Earth's shadow.

Then, knowing how big the moon is, they can calculate how far away it is.

This will catch them all up to the ancient Greeks, who did this hundreds of years before Jesus was born.