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Serious Thread: Don't let your young children watch YouTube Kids alone

SketchMaster

Diamond Member
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKp2gikIkD8

Summary:
There are people churning out mass amounts of computer-generated videos that literally just take a list of keywords and programmatically generates content that young children will click on. It's some of the most creepy stuff you'll ever see, and none of it gets flagged as unsafe for children.

Worst part? Google likely knows about this and lets it slide because it generates a boatload of money through ad revenue.

I know this topic has come up in the past, but this video does a very good job explaining the issue. With the holidays around the corner, you'll likely want to share this video with your friends who are thinking of getting tablets as gifts for their kids.


Edit: Philip DeFranco also talked about this and shows just how skeevy some of the content is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_K-shDq-kM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mnTCYsbKfw
 
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I saw this a few weeks ago on Digg, and uninstalled Youtube kids off our iPad.

That & Roblox. Watch a kid play Roblox online for half an hour over their shoulder & then see how fast that app gets uninstalled.
 
I was expecting some creepy computer generated videos.

Instead there are just links to videos talking about other videos?

WTF?
 
For some reason I can't post the link, but google "Something is Wrong with the Internet" for the Medium piece about this.

I have run into this with my 4 year old niece.
 
I wrote something like this years ago and people laughed at me, but I still say letting kids watch Youtube unsupervised really is a parenting fail.
 
For some reason I can't post the link, but google "Something is Wrong with the Internet" for the Medium piece about this.

I have run into this with my 4 year old niece.

Excellent article:

https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2

This is a key point:
One of the traditional roles of branded content is that it is a trusted source.

Skipping down further:
The system is complicit in the abuse.

Google & Youtube make bank off this stuff. It's also big money for the content creators. These dudes make $15,000 a DAY from Youtube:

http://naibuzz.com/2016/12/15/much-money-funnel-vision-makes-youtube/

Alphabet will act quickly to implement changes now that advertisers (i.e. their revenue stream) are starting to pull away. But yeah, the point is, they aren't a Trust Brand for kids, and people expect them to be, for some odd reason.
 
Philip DeFranco is annoying and his videos are annoying maybe just show the offending videos rather then telling us what we should be offended by?
 
Youtube is really weird about what it censors and what it allows. I definitely would not allow kids on there unsupervised.

An ISIS beheading video = ok because it would be discrimination to delete it, it's their culture and we should respect that.

Fruit flies in a microwave = animal cruelty and the channel is banned.
 
The whole You-tube commenting system had a major overhaul (for the worse) about 6-8 months ago. You used to be able to respond to a comment in a side-window but now you must re-open the original vid to respond to a comment. Everyone hated it, but it was clear you-tube was wanting more views to ask sponsors running ad's for more $$. Here's what a volunteer had to say, "The tools used to screen such comments, volunteer moderators told the BBC, haven’t been working properly for over a year".
 
Youtube is really weird about what it censors and what it allows. I definitely would not allow kids on there unsupervised.

An ISIS beheading video = ok because it would be discrimination to delete it, it's their culture and we should respect that.

Fruit flies in a microwave = animal cruelty and the channel is banned.
I've never seen any ISIS "beheading vid's" on you-tube Google pays for the service to run the infrastructure to keep it going, they also have the right to set guidelines as they like, let ISIS come to CA and file a lawsuit.
 
The comment system is terrible, it's so clunky and hard to use. Like sometimes it does not even load properly and you have to hit refresh a bunch of times. If someone replied to a comment you made there is also no easy way to jump to that comment from the notifications as it just brings you to the main thread. It's a mess. The order of comments is also really weird, there's not really any logic to it.

In some of the more professional parts of Youtube the comments are actually not just trolls. But good luck trying to follow anything. If I ran a big channel I'd personally disable the comments and encourage everyone to sign up on the forums and post in a thread dedicated to each video. But would not be surprised if that's against their ToS or something.
 
The comment system is terrible, it's so clunky and hard to use. Like sometimes it does not even load properly and you have to hit refresh a bunch of times. If someone replied to a comment you made there is also no easy way to jump to that comment from the notifications as it just brings you to the main thread. It's a mess. The order of comments is also really weird, there's not really any logic to it.

In some of the more professional parts of Youtube the comments are actually not just trolls. But good luck trying to follow anything. If I ran a big channel I'd personally disable the comments and encourage everyone to sign up on the forums and post in a thread dedicated to each video. But would not be surprised if that's against their ToS or something.

Well the old system worked very well, but you were able to respond to a comment without actually going to the vid itself. I guess YT didn't like the idea of YT being used as a message-board without views so they scrapped the old system much to the dislike of everyone on YT. Now it seems even the Mod's there can't get a handle on the ensuing mess.
 
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