Self-Harm Clips Hidden in Kids' Cartoons (bbc.com)

Children's charity the NSPCC has accused YouTube of failing to tackle dangerous content on its youth channel. From a report: YouTube Kids, dubbed as a safer, child-friendly version of the video-sharing site, has been criticised by parents for failing to remove cartoons that contain clips depicting suicide methods on its platform. The clips show a YouTuber demonstrating a suicide method. Google told the BBC it works hard to remove such content. "We have strict policies that prohibit videos which promote self-harm. We rely on both user-flagging and smart-detection technology to flag this content for our reviewers," the firm said in a statement. "We are always working to improve our systems and to remove violat[ing] content more quickly." It is unclear how or why the clips depicting suicide methods were embedded in children's cartoons. The BBC has received no response from the YouTuber. It also asked Google, which owns YouTube, if it had spoken to him directly but did not get a reply.

Comments

No more YT kids for my kids

[Danathar]

My wife and I had just about removed all instances from the rokus. It's all gone now. Trust is violated. Not sure how Google gets us back (if ever)

Re:No more YT kids for my kids

[Frobnicator]

It's all gone now. Trust is violated. Not sure how Google gets us back (if ever)

The problem is the lack of consequences for their actions.

A troll creates a channel, grabs a bunch of (infringing) videos, inserts the self-harm clips as described, and laughs as their view count increases. If they are ever discovered, their maximum consequence is having the account terminated, and they can trivially create another one.

If instead they discover there is a near-100% chance that the face child endangerment charges, child abuse charges, reckless endangerment charges, and more, it would drop. There are still some sick people who would still occasionally do it, but if they faced consequences for their actions the vast majority would stop.

Unlike the free-for-all version, the child-centric YouTube Kids failed at their promise. They claimed they were going to have carefully curated content that was age appropriate. What they should have done, in addition to actually having humans curate the content, would be to verify the others creating and updating content through background checks and validated identities. Thus anyone who wanted to post would could not do so under the shroud of anonymity, and once their harmful content was discovered it would be followed not only by an online takedown, but by officers at the door with an arrest warrant for felony crimes for each and every violator.

Easy answer

[Nidi62]

It is unclear...why the clips depicting suicide methods were embedded in children's cartoons.

People are dicks.

Re:Easy answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer is Millenials are soft and impressionable and triggered by everything.

The ol' classic cartoons had characters preparing to off themselves. Tom and Jerry, Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote, Bugs Bunny etc.

No one in my elementary, middle or high school committed suicide, imagine that.

You don't know that for sure.
There were about 15-20 deaths in the 12 years of the public schools I attended.
One thing I know for sure is that we kids were not fully informed on the nature of those deaths.
FYI, high speed single car accidents in the AMs that are running off a bridge, wrong-way on the interstate, etc is probably a suicide not an accident. But the police are never going to put that into a report unless there's a suicide note.
And the modern way for young people to off themselves is not car crashes nor self-inflicted gunshot, it's an overdose of a drug the gets written up as "accidental overdose".

cite needed?
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/03/15/591577807/how-many-opioid-overdoses-are-suicides
https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/news/20180425/many-opioid-overdoses-may-be-suicides#1
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/avypkp/how-many-drug-overdoses-are-actually-suicides

Re:Easy answer

[alvinrod]

If he went to a small school, it's highly probable that no one committed suicide at any of his schools, while he was in school. Elementary school children are really unlikely to kill themselves, same for people in middle school. The current rate for teen suicide (in boys at least) is only around 14 per 100,000 according to most sources I could find. Napkin math says you'd need a little over 1,000 boys in your high school before it becomes as likely as not for one of them to commit suicide while you're in high school.

According to the CDC, teen suicide rate is up, but it's a matter of what time scale you're looking at. If you measure from the mid-2000's, the suicide rate is up, but if you compare it to the late-1980's and early-1990's, the suicide rate is down. It had a harder time finding good data that goes way back, but sources suggest the rates were lower in the 1960's, but I can't find much that goes back further than that, at least not for teenagers.

I also didn't have anyone commit suicide in my elementary, middle, or high school while growing up. I don't really see how I can prove that to you though since you'd be asking me to prove a negative. I mean I suppose I could try to get a record of everyone who attended at the same time as me and try to show a lack of any death certificates for those people in that span of time, but that would be kind of hard to cite.

Re:Easy answer

[lgw]

Someone mod AC up - the post is informative.

FYI, high speed single car accidents in the AMs that are running off a bridge, wrong-way on the interstate, etc is probably a suicide not an accident. But the police are never going to put that into a report unless there's a suicide note.
And the modern way for young people to off themselves is not car crashes nor self-inflicted gunshot, it's an overdose of a drug the gets written up as "accidental overdose".

FYI, the police are also never going to put "self-inflicted gunshot" into a report unless there's a note. It's "accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun". From the statistics, you'd think cleaning a gun is an intensely dangerous activity.

Re: Easy answer

[lgw]

It is if you don't unload and clear the chamber first. A lot of people forget about that one in the chamber. One little slip while taking the slide off and bang.

You just don't point the gun at your face until it's disassembled. I've never heard of anyone who didn't understand that, even when very drunk. It's the most basic rule of gun safety: all guns are loaded, until you're looking through the empty chamber through the locked-back slide. It's perhaps believable for someone to shoot themselves in the leg, through the table, though even that is an unlikely chain of events.

Can't Promise Curated Content and Not Curate It

[Koreantoast]

Should be important to note that this is not talking about YouTube in general but specifically a product that the company setup promising carefully curated content for children. If you're going to create a curated set of programs intentionally marketed toward children, they really should be reviewing videos before putting them on the app versus just hoping detection algorithms and self-reporting are going to catch clips spliced in. For this kind of program, once your credibility is shot, you're not going to recover anytime in the near future.

This is a test. It is only a test

[fustakrakich]

Do not be afraid. Do not get mad. Breathe deep... Relax... Mellow... Ommm... Ommm

Re:Or you could just get over it

[nwaack]

There's lots of bad things out there in the world. Shielding your kids from it is largely pointless. You're better off just explaining it to them to the limits of their understanding. That way they don't develop morbid fascinations with anything.

Except that YouTube Kids was supposed to be a safe place with procured content, and it clearly isn't. Maybe you don't mind exposing small children to this type of crap, but I sure as hell am going to keep it to a minimum if I can help it.

Re:Or you could just get over it

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have YouTube Kids on any of my devices because I believe in spending time with and coaching my young children while we're on the internet. BUT -

Shielding your kids from it is largely pointless.

We're talking about a platform geared towards toddlers and kindergartners, you fucking retard. Talking is great and all, but try explaining the concept of wanting to end your own life to someone who can't yet functionally grasp the concept of death. Jesus Christ you're stupid.

Re:Sigh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cartoon self-harm is now banned?

This isn't about Wile E. Coyote blowing himself up. Read the article.

This is about a cartoon that has a LIVE-ACTION CLIP OF A MAN DEMONSTRATING A SUICIDE METHOD spliced into it.

I know everyone's down on moral outrage these days, but it's pretty damn well justified here.

Re:Or you could just get over it

[ShanghaiBill]

Shielding your kids from it is largely pointless. You're better off just explaining it to them to the limits of their understanding.

That depends on the age of the kid. There is not much a 13 year-old needs to be sheltered from. But there is plenty a 5 year-old should not see.

YouTube kids to targeted at 3 to 8 year olds. The "shielding" is its raison d'etre.

Re:Retard iggymanz is easily confused.

[lgw]

"Millennials" are no longer "children", you're thinking of "Generation Z" - Since you wanted to be a troll, troll correctly dipshit.

Millennials are people born 1985-2005. Generations are 20 years.

1945-1965 Baby Boomer
1965-1985 GenX
1985-2005 Millenial
2005-2025 Digital Native

People make up finer-grained marketing demographics, of course.

Re:Retard iggymanz is easily confused.

[Powercntrl]

Millennials are people born 1985-2005. Generations are 20 years.

Actually, it's not quite so cut-and-dried as this. There really isn't a whole lot of agreement on the exact start and end years of a generation.

Give

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

A "kids" site should be completely curated.

Sounds like YouTube is trying to have their cake and eat it too.

Re:Retard iggymanz is easily confused.

[Ashthon]

Wikipedia gives these years for millennials:

United States PIRG - 1983-2000
United States Census Bureau - 1982-2000
Demographers William Straus and Neil Howe - 1982-2004
Ernst and Young - 1981-1996
Pew Research Center - 1981-1996
SYZYGY - 1981-1998
Asia Business Unit of Corporate Directions - 1981-2000
Goldman Sachs - 1980-2000
Resolution Foundation - 1980-2000
Australia's McCrindle Research - 1980-1994
PricewaterhouseCoopers - 1980-1995
MSW Research - 1980-1996
United States Chamber of Commerce - 1980-1999
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary - 1980-1999
MetLife - 1977-1994
Nielsen Media Research - 1977-1994

I think we can all agree that those using 1980 are wrong! Certainty, somebody born in January 1980 is most definitely not a millennial!!!

That reminds me of this video where Mahk finds out he's a millennial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15iLHlJPp_0

Re:I don't think it matters

[lilrobbie]

The risk I feel you're overlooking here is that kids at these young ages will mimic stuff they see, because they don't yet have the depth of understanding required to determine which actions are dangerous.

It's not the possibly-immoral-or-disagreeable things that people are concerned about. It would be the video that shows someone stabbing or harming themselves, or eating poisonous things (hello tide-pods!) that cause the outrage. On their own, the kid might not think to try this, but once they see someone else doing it, you can bet it'll move to the top of their todo list.

There are some really good reasons to shelter children of certain ages from certain things...

Re:YouTube is banned in my house

[djinn6]

You're just setting them up to get addicted to it once they're free from your control. I've always been allowed to play video games, and when I went to college, it was business as usual. Other people weren't allowed to play at all at home. Guess what they did once they were out of their parents control?