It's really surprising that youtube kids isn't completely curated. If an uploader with an approved video changes the file in any way, it simply gets dropped. I'm sure Google can employ 100 people to watch and approve enough content to last kids essentially forever.
― Spencer Chow, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 19:19 (six years ago) link
It is pretty shocking that it wasn't moderated, I mean damn FB has entire buildings of people purging snuff videos
― Brakhage, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 19:23 (six years ago) link
It's not surprising to me. The fuck does Google care whether their content breaks your kid?
― Bernard Crunderdunder (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 8 November 2017 19:24 (six years ago) link
god just thinking about the people who have to do that as their day job upsets me so much
― Simon H., Wednesday, 8 November 2017 19:24 (six years ago) link
Those Bad Baby live action ones, which I think are Russian, are very strange and silly. I don't know if they would seem as weird to Russians or not
― kinder, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 19:26 (six years ago) link
didn't Sting address this issue in the 80s?
― sarahell, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 19:30 (six years ago) link
Booming post Whiney
― stet, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 19:33 (six years ago) link
there's been lots of research on children's safety online, see Sonia Livingstone's work: http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/Experts/profile.aspx?KeyValue=s.livingstone%40lse.ac.uk (full disclosure: I work at LSE)
― Neil S, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 19:34 (six years ago) link
thanks for that!
― sarahell, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 19:35 (six years ago) link
np, she's a bit of a machine, there's loads of stuff listed there
― Neil S, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 19:36 (six years ago) link
The world is shit, and people are horrible -- the issue is how long do you wait until a child is forced to find this out.
― sarahell, Wednesday, November 8, 2017 1:04 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark
the world is mean and man uncouth! answer: until your kid can handle the threepenny opera?
sorryi have no real opinion about these videos to share just wanted to reiterate that the world is mean and people are terrible.
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Wednesday, 8 November 2017 19:45 (six years ago) link
People tend toward antisocial behavior when they aren't held accountable for said behavior and when they don't directly see the negative effects of said behavior. Hence way too many people treating the internet like it's some sort of sociopathy RPG.
― Bernard Crunderdunder (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 8 November 2017 19:57 (six years ago) link
On the lighter side there is no way Aphex doesn't use these as backing videos for his next shows
― Brakhage, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 19:59 (six years ago) link
As somebody who was freaked out by the opening credits of Wall Street Week as a kid, just thinking about what I would have turned into with a steady diet of this pure incoherence is terrifying
Keep kids away from Adult Swim.
― Eazy, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 19:59 (six years ago) link
yea, whiney really otm
― marcos, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 20:08 (six years ago) link
i'd never seen any of these meat-dripping zombie superhero nonsense weird things, what a fucking weird world we live in. who is creating these and why?
― akm, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 20:12 (six years ago) link
lolz?
― sarahell, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 20:25 (six years ago) link
seems like an awful lot of work for lolz
― akm, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 20:28 (six years ago) link
^ solitary posts that ...!
― sarahell, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 20:34 (six years ago) link
Whiney's post is so otm. It's why I linked the Dutch article (wouldn't normally because useless if not in English), as it keeps me busy. And all this def feels like a completely new low I'd never imagined possible. The "why" question bothers me, as I don't have an answer. They could harvest clicks and would get some revenue from that, but clearly you'd earn way more if you actually make a good kids video, instead of injecting it with this deep, at times very subtle dread. Dark days.
― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 20:45 (six years ago) link
idk it seems pretty clear to me, if you can game YT's algorithm somehow then you get a good chunk of ad revenue
the question is why people are just learning about this just now despite having something like 3 billion combined views. clicking around you see a lot of these vids with 100k views but only 50 up/down votes and 2-3 comments. that ratio isn't really possible organically.
― frogbs, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 20:46 (six years ago) link
but clearly you'd earn way more if you actually make a good kids video, instead of injecting it with this deep, at times very subtle dread.
yeah this is the thing worth exploring. I mean even if this is all AI-generated the fact that syringes and machine guns are part of the program is pretty disturbing in itself. My fear is that the "pregnant Elsa" stuff is done specifically to attract clicks from curious 7-year old kids with a lot of questions
― frogbs, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 20:53 (six years ago) link
pretty sure syringes and machine guns factored into multiple episodes of Roadrunner cartoons
― sarahell, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 20:55 (six years ago) link
my suspicion is that it's made for lols but then picked up on by the algorithms and recombinated/mass-produced specifically because "dark" stuff gets more obsessive emotional engagement (<--- obviously here is this post's sweeping and unproven assertion abt humans) and we built a big machine to produce emotional engagement for money
― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 20:58 (six years ago) link
Sarahell, surely you can see the difference? They're used as instruments in cartoons to drive the pun or slapstick home. Nothing like that in these.
― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 20:59 (six years ago) link
frogbs the long medium article that never quite gets to the point like it can't say what it saw at the mountains of madness does say somewhere that many of those viewers are probably bots too.
― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:00 (six years ago) link
xp - but we're fretting about infants and toddlers seeing these, and I feel like we are perceiving these as adults, rather than as the, er, intended audience.
― sarahell, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:02 (six years ago) link
also, some of these could be perceived as slapstick. I mean, Peppa Pig's family drinking bleach vs. Wile E. Coyote being immolated by a tree ...
― sarahell, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:03 (six years ago) link
xxp right - I just wonder how many. like a video with 100k views, how many of those were children? I wouldn't be surprised if the actual number was very very small.
― frogbs, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:06 (six years ago) link
So essentially your point is... It's not that bad? I'm trying to understand your stance on here, besides playing down the effect it can have on kids (which I agree on, but it's not the whole story here)
― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:06 (six years ago) link
*on this
― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:07 (six years ago) link
my point is that content-wise it doesn't seem that horrific, though the idea of technology subverting parental control is novel and creepy, however, I also feel like this is happening at a time where parents have/want more control over their children than in previous generations.
― sarahell, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:09 (six years ago) link
i'm creeped out by this too but it's funny that we_on_the_left suddenly have a mass child abuse theory of our very own, except being on the left it's not individual jews and catholics that are doing it (in a metaphor for their secret perversion of everything) but the architecture of the system itself (in a metaphor for its open etc)
― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:11 (six years ago) link
are these all animated/cartoons, or are ones where people are editing in footage of actual rape, murder, or concentration camp victims or similar?
― sarahell, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:13 (six years ago) link
content wise these are way more horrific than old cartoons.
― akm, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:14 (six years ago) link
I guess for me, growing up, the news and real things like dying in a nuclear war were more disturbing than violent/nihilistic cartoons
― sarahell, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:14 (six years ago) link
well for me too but this is a step beyond. this is devoid of story, devoid of anything...it's just random images of characters with heads swapped out for meat zombies, stabbing or raping each other, etc. I know you and I grew up with things like Eraserhead and the Butthole Surfers and shit but not when we were like, 2.
― akm, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:16 (six years ago) link
it's like a great empty chasm of violent nothing. maybe it's the perfect entertainment for the US, maybe it's what we deserve.
― akm, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:17 (six years ago) link
the algorithmic CGI stuff is bad, but jfc those Toy Freaks videos
that guy needs to be in jail
― Number None, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:17 (six years ago) link
I don't remember any media content from when I was 2, except for things like general color schemes
― sarahell, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:17 (six years ago) link
Please tell me Sara is doing D- trolling instead of expressing F+ opinions
― "the fgti incident?" (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:19 (six years ago) link
Please tell me that Whiney just vomited out the details of his post and didn't actually believe the details made sense/were realistic.
― sarahell, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:21 (six years ago) link
this is written by the guy who made "tickled"
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/21-11-2016/hello-my-name-is-ally-how-children-are-being-exploited-by-youtube-predators/
― goole, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:21 (six years ago) link
― sarahell, Wednesday, November 8, 2017 9:13 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Gotcha Sarahell. On the above, the ones that disturb me most are those with actual children - I've seen both Russian and American ones - being made to act out a 'story' that borders on, or veers into adult fetish/violent fantasies. Kids are acting out things probably not knowing what they are doing. They're being used. The scat videos, acted out as a pun or mere potty training, a child acting she's Elsa and is pregnant and is getting aborted ("that's a baaad baby in your belly! We need to get rid of bad baby!" with a cheerful tune underneath... For kids it reads: bad needs to go away. For adults: fuck if I know. Letting a kid lie there pretending to be pregnant, hand reaching under skirt but 'innocent' enough to not be offensive in the literal sense).
It's the ones with children acting, where they seem to believe they are acting in a story whole for adults that same story is a very different one, preying on them, are the worst. And this is a genre, apparently.
― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:23 (six years ago) link
You started out this thread with, like, "parents should just have their full time nannies take their kids to art class and hiking adventures" and have now gone into "2 year olds are dumb, they won't really remember watching IRON MAN SHITS IN DORA THE EXPLORERS MOUTH FOR TWO HOURS HD"
― "the fgti incident?" (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:24 (six years ago) link
xp to sara
For sure dying in a nuclear war is super disturbing, however another disturbing thing is toddlers watching hour-long videos packed with subtly sexual/violent imagery to a jaunty soundtrack of laughter and clapping.It would be great for kids if their lives were so full of interaction and enrichment that they didn't discover YouTube until they were 12 or whatever, but sadly some kids don't have ideal upbringings. My gf works with vulnerable young adults, many of whom are single mothers. She visited one client last week whose daughter was watching one of these videos when she arrived.
― Blandford Forum, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:24 (six years ago) link
yeah just let little kids watch anything, they won't remember it
― brimstead, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:25 (six years ago) link
(sarcasm)
Sara I dunno how much of this you watched but if you go down the rabbit hole far enough this stuff very much gets to be more than just "cartoonish" violence. the stuff linked in the OP is very tame, even that really strange video at the end. it gets much, much worse.
― frogbs, Wednesday, 8 November 2017 21:26 (six years ago) link