8 ms·

Maybe the author is right - we can't rely on YouTube, Facebook, and AI to police these things, maybe it is the job of the parents to control what our kids see a

Maybe the author is right - we can't rely on YouTube, Facebook, and AI to police these things, maybe it is the job of the parents to control what our kids see and hear. There are thousands upon thousands of rendered, cartoon, and live-action videos featuring popular childrens characters like Spider-Man and Elsa that have extremely disturbing themes dealing with punishment, handcuffing/restraint, dismemberment, injections, bodily waste, etc. It seems like they get more and more unusual as autoplay goes on. As a parent they are extremely unnerving and I'll certainly never let young children watch youtube unattended and I warn every parent I know about them. There are places for curated content and there are content bazaars. YouTube Autoplay is a bazaar. Facebook is a bazaar. Recognize where you are, the motivations of those putting things in front of you and your family, and act accordingly.

pm215 9y ago
Yes, Youtube is a bazaar. But why is _Youtube Kids_ a bazaar? Its whole appeal is that it is (at first impression) a place for curated content, such that it's kid-friendly. But it doesn't work (eg https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/business/media/youtube-kids-paw-patrol.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/business/media/youtube-ki...) because google is trying to create a curated content zone by algorithm.
- TAForObvReasons 9y ago
  The real question is: "Can an algorithm identify child-friendly content?" The answer is currently unknown. Families are basically the "beta testers" of the algorithms in question, but the downsides of that approach, like exposing kids to really disturbing content, are horrifying.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - alphonsegaston 9y ago
    Marketing your product as kid-friendly and then demonstrably exposing children to abusive content, through “algorithmic negligence” or otherwise, should incur serious penalty. It never ceases to amaze that the kind of psychological engineering these companies engage in is outside the bounds of any established ethics, but somehow they escape unscathed because money.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    Child-friendly isn't even a well-defined objective category; different parents will disagree violently (sometimes, quite literally) over what is appropriate.
  - vlunkr 9y ago
    How about "Do we need algorithms to find child-friendly conent?"
- tb303 9y ago
  That's exactly it. The whole point of YTK was to protect our kids from the fire hose and provide a trusted safe space. About a year ago it was. Our son was watching Blippi and videos about banana slugs. We deleted the app once we saw the dark shit slipping in there and it was clear YouTube was not acting to address it.
- replicatorblog 9y ago
  I was surprised to read those posts re: YouTube Kids. My daughter has watched a few thousand hours of YT Kids over the last two years while she's been bed-ridden with leukemia. My wife or I have been within earshot for almost all of it. 99% of what she watched was human made content and the most risque thing she saw was a video where a "host" pretended to make some stuffed animal poop gumballs. A good chunk was actually educational—she went on a kick learning how to make healthy smoothies and learning about the solar system, state capitols, etc. Perhaps we've just been extraordinarily lucky, but the reporting re: TY Kids this week reminds me of the 1980s panic around Dungeons and Dragons.
azangru 9y ago
Is there any reliable body of evidence about what happens to children if they watch content that their parents find unnerving? Do they become sociopaths? Drug addicts? Neurotics? Criminals? Is there any real need for controlling what a child can see and what he can not?
- jerkstate 9y ago
  "what is trauma" for 100, alex
- tb303 9y ago
  I don't think you are familiar with the content. As a parent, I am. We've reported them to YT and they don't act. These are videos that pretend to be about spiderman or peppa pig but involve blood, violence, sexual themes, dismemberment, etc. I understand what you are asking but it's irrelevant here, this isn't an intellectual exercise where we decide "hey, this isn't so bad after all."
  - megaman22 9y ago
    Sounds like Robot Chicken. Fortunately Cartoon Network firewalls off Adult Swim with an hour or so of King of the Hill or other bland, boring material.
    - jff 9y ago
      I typically only watch Cartoon Network when I'm traveling for work and I only wish it was King of the Hill. They use Family Guy as a firewall and it's fucking interminable, I keep flipping back hoping it's come around to Robot Chicken or whatever but it's always more goddamn Family Guy.
    - astura 9y ago
      No, Robot Chicken is a show that's intended for an adult audience and intended to amuse adults. This garbage on YouTube Kids is aimed at getting children to watch it and intended to be disturbing to children. The titles say things like "educational, learn numbers" and the channels are called stuff like "Kids TV."
harryf 9y ago
Sorry but I strongly disagree with the "it's the parents job" argument. Today on HN there was an interesting discussion on addictive apps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15662004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15662004 In essence you have parents vs the best funded organizations in the world, packed with PhDs working full time to grab all our attention, children being the most susceptible. The only advantage parents is physical proximity. Disadvantages include lack of time, knowledge, awareness etc. I'm not betting on parents winning
- AlexandrB 9y ago
  I'm not sure why this was downvoted. This same debate has taken place with every medium so far and the same inane point - "it's up to the parents" - was raised for TV, video games, etc. Yes, it's up to the parents. But unless you have time to pre-screen every minute of content your kids watch (hint: if you have a job, you don't have time to do this), at some point you have to trust a ratings agency like MPAA, ESRB, or a company like Google when they say - "this content here, it's safe for kids". The obvious problem is that YouTube Kids is utterly failing at this. What's the realistic alternative? Watching hours upon hours of kids content on YouTube and creating your own playlists? How do you stop a child from going to a "recommended video" afterwards? What about ad content, how do you filter that? Edit: The only realistic alternative is not letting kids watch YouTube. This is fine, but then maybe Google should not be advertising a section of YouTube as "for kids".
  - nugator 9y ago
    In Sweden we have some commercial free television channels that are run by the state. It also has play services for all content. One of the play services is "the children's channel" which has something like 100 curated kid's shows (from all over the world). No commercials. My kids can watch whatever shows they like there and it feels safe. Is there anything similar in the US?
    - rootsudo 9y ago
      No. Nothing like that. At best it's a few channels from Disney, which is def not for the childs best interest besides non-sexual themes and ads. And even then, things get pretty sexual.
ravenstine 9y ago
Problem is what do you do when most of the population has extreme difficulty in reasoning this?
hosh 9y ago
I noted elsewhere that Neal Stephenson wrote about this in Diamond Age, way back -- tech like this is not a substitute for parenting. In the past few years, I've been learning intensely about communities and family: got married and learning to be a step-father. I am also involved in a legal-tech startup and got to hear how lawyers think about governance and law. I don't think social media is a substitute for community either, although it can be beneficial _if_ used within the context of community. Here are some of the things I learned: - There is a tension between global and local concerns. Neither alone can address everything. Local concerns -- communities -- have people living there. They have a stake in their local environment. There are issues when people outside of a community (people without stakes within the community, who are not residents) try to influence things. This could be anything from coordinating regional concerns (such as people building upscale neighborhoods in a flood control area built by the Army Corp of Engineers in Houston), or outside investors holding municipal bonds. - I discovered Christopher Alexander's work on pattern languages and designs. I found his keynote to the OOPSLA '96 conference. His work inspired the design patterns of OOP as well as Human Interface Design, but I don't think his vision and philosophy was ever fully implemented. His life's work somehow addresses how to design for both global and local concerns. The idea is that architects develop pattern languages that will always result in cohesive, livable designs (global), and the actual users of that pattern language are the people who live within that community (local). Although this is primarily focused on building design, I think it has some overlap with governance. Physical environment will shape and influence how people interact with each other. - There are people who are isolated because they don't fit with their local community's norm. Allowing them to connect with other people around the world is great. However, I think it is important for a person's psychological health to have some connection with their local neighbors. - My wife and I tried allowing my step-daughter to have a smart phone, mainly so we can reach her in an emergency. She quickly found ways to become absorbed into it, neglecting her responsibilities to the family and our expectations for her as parents. We tried using more tech to restrict it. She got around them -- claims innocence (and to this day, I don't really know whether she was or not). In the end, we got her a flip phone. She called a "granny phone", and we blocked calls and texts at the carrier level. She doesn't have her own tablet or computer anymore: we have family devices that are kept in the family office and she is forbidden to take it in her room. (Where she still sometimes sneaks it to bed and stays up all night watching youtube videos). - My wife told my daughter that she had to be at least 13 to get on social media, and she is forbidden from it. That was half a year ago. I had always wanted to get my daughter to _earn_ her smartphone (and by extension, social media) through some sort of modern-day rite of passage. But over the months, I am more and more inclined to forbid her from social media until she graduates high school.
vlunkr 9y ago
This is a complex issue but I'm inclined to agree with you. Giving Facebook/Youtube the responsibility to censor content feels dangerous with the amount of influence they have. I know it's the "think of the children" thing, but I hope Youtube sees the outrage about these spammy kids channels and does something so they aren't suggested and autoplayed. To me that's a special case. Grown adults who see fake news on Facebook and take it as the truth regularly.. Is that really on Facebook to fix that?
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
Would be great for a community rating scheme where parents themselves could thumb up/down videos.

pm215 9y ago

Yes, Youtube is a bazaar. But why is _Youtube Kids_ a bazaar? Its whole appeal is that it is (at first impression) a place for curated content, such that it's kid-friendly. But it doesn't work (eg https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/business/media/youtube-kids-paw-patrol.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/business/media/youtube-ki...) because google is trying to create a curated content zone by algorithm.

TAForObvReasons 9y ago
The real question is: "Can an algorithm identify child-friendly content?" The answer is currently unknown. Families are basically the "beta testers" of the algorithms in question, but the downsides of that approach, like exposing kids to really disturbing content, are horrifying.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- alphonsegaston 9y ago
  Marketing your product as kid-friendly and then demonstrably exposing children to abusive content, through “algorithmic negligence” or otherwise, should incur serious penalty. It never ceases to amaze that the kind of psychological engineering these companies engage in is outside the bounds of any established ethics, but somehow they escape unscathed because money.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Child-friendly isn't even a well-defined objective category; different parents will disagree violently (sometimes, quite literally) over what is appropriate.
- vlunkr 9y ago
  How about "Do we need algorithms to find child-friendly conent?"
tb303 9y ago
That's exactly it. The whole point of YTK was to protect our kids from the fire hose and provide a trusted safe space. About a year ago it was. Our son was watching Blippi and videos about banana slugs. We deleted the app once we saw the dark shit slipping in there and it was clear YouTube was not acting to address it.
replicatorblog 9y ago
I was surprised to read those posts re: YouTube Kids. My daughter has watched a few thousand hours of YT Kids over the last two years while she's been bed-ridden with leukemia. My wife or I have been within earshot for almost all of it. 99% of what she watched was human made content and the most risque thing she saw was a video where a "host" pretended to make some stuffed animal poop gumballs. A good chunk was actually educational—she went on a kick learning how to make healthy smoothies and learning about the solar system, state capitols, etc. Perhaps we've just been extraordinarily lucky, but the reporting re: TY Kids this week reminds me of the 1980s panic around Dungeons and Dragons.

azangru 9y ago

Is there any reliable body of evidence about what happens to children if they watch content that their parents find unnerving? Do they become sociopaths? Drug addicts? Neurotics? Criminals? Is there any real need for controlling what a child can see and what he can not?

jerkstate 9y ago
"what is trauma" for 100, alex
tb303 9y ago
I don't think you are familiar with the content. As a parent, I am. We've reported them to YT and they don't act. These are videos that pretend to be about spiderman or peppa pig but involve blood, violence, sexual themes, dismemberment, etc. I understand what you are asking but it's irrelevant here, this isn't an intellectual exercise where we decide "hey, this isn't so bad after all."
- megaman22 9y ago
  Sounds like Robot Chicken. Fortunately Cartoon Network firewalls off Adult Swim with an hour or so of King of the Hill or other bland, boring material.
  - jff 9y ago
    I typically only watch Cartoon Network when I'm traveling for work and I only wish it was King of the Hill. They use Family Guy as a firewall and it's fucking interminable, I keep flipping back hoping it's come around to Robot Chicken or whatever but it's always more goddamn Family Guy.
  - astura 9y ago
    No, Robot Chicken is a show that's intended for an adult audience and intended to amuse adults. This garbage on YouTube Kids is aimed at getting children to watch it and intended to be disturbing to children. The titles say things like "educational, learn numbers" and the channels are called stuff like "Kids TV."

harryf 9y ago

Sorry but I strongly disagree with the "it's the parents job" argument. Today on HN there was an interesting discussion on addictive apps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15662004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15662004 In essence you have parents vs the best funded organizations in the world, packed with PhDs working full time to grab all our attention, children being the most susceptible. The only advantage parents is physical proximity. Disadvantages include lack of time, knowledge, awareness etc. I'm not betting on parents winning

AlexandrB 9y ago
I'm not sure why this was downvoted. This same debate has taken place with every medium so far and the same inane point - "it's up to the parents" - was raised for TV, video games, etc. Yes, it's up to the parents. But unless you have time to pre-screen every minute of content your kids watch (hint: if you have a job, you don't have time to do this), at some point you have to trust a ratings agency like MPAA, ESRB, or a company like Google when they say - "this content here, it's safe for kids". The obvious problem is that YouTube Kids is utterly failing at this. What's the realistic alternative? Watching hours upon hours of kids content on YouTube and creating your own playlists? How do you stop a child from going to a "recommended video" afterwards? What about ad content, how do you filter that? Edit: The only realistic alternative is not letting kids watch YouTube. This is fine, but then maybe Google should not be advertising a section of YouTube as "for kids".
- nugator 9y ago
  In Sweden we have some commercial free television channels that are run by the state. It also has play services for all content. One of the play services is "the children's channel" which has something like 100 curated kid's shows (from all over the world). No commercials. My kids can watch whatever shows they like there and it feels safe. Is there anything similar in the US?
  - rootsudo 9y ago
    No. Nothing like that. At best it's a few channels from Disney, which is def not for the childs best interest besides non-sexual themes and ads. And even then, things get pretty sexual.

ravenstine 9y ago

Problem is what do you do when most of the population has extreme difficulty in reasoning this?

hosh 9y ago

I noted elsewhere that Neal Stephenson wrote about this in Diamond Age, way back -- tech like this is not a substitute for parenting. In the past few years, I've been learning intensely about communities and family: got married and learning to be a step-father. I am also involved in a legal-tech startup and got to hear how lawyers think about governance and law. I don't think social media is a substitute for community either, although it can be beneficial _if_ used within the context of community. Here are some of the things I learned: - There is a tension between global and local concerns. Neither alone can address everything. Local concerns -- communities -- have people living there. They have a stake in their local environment. There are issues when people outside of a community (people without stakes within the community, who are not residents) try to influence things. This could be anything from coordinating regional concerns (such as people building upscale neighborhoods in a flood control area built by the Army Corp of Engineers in Houston), or outside investors holding municipal bonds. - I discovered Christopher Alexander's work on pattern languages and designs. I found his keynote to the OOPSLA '96 conference. His work inspired the design patterns of OOP as well as Human Interface Design, but I don't think his vision and philosophy was ever fully implemented. His life's work somehow addresses how to design for both global and local concerns. The idea is that architects develop pattern languages that will always result in cohesive, livable designs (global), and the actual users of that pattern language are the people who live within that community (local). Although this is primarily focused on building design, I think it has some overlap with governance. Physical environment will shape and influence how people interact with each other. - There are people who are isolated because they don't fit with their local community's norm. Allowing them to connect with other people around the world is great. However, I think it is important for a person's psychological health to have some connection with their local neighbors. - My wife and I tried allowing my step-daughter to have a smart phone, mainly so we can reach her in an emergency. She quickly found ways to become absorbed into it, neglecting her responsibilities to the family and our expectations for her as parents. We tried using more tech to restrict it. She got around them -- claims innocence (and to this day, I don't really know whether she was or not). In the end, we got her a flip phone. She called a "granny phone", and we blocked calls and texts at the carrier level. She doesn't have her own tablet or computer anymore: we have family devices that are kept in the family office and she is forbidden to take it in her room. (Where she still sometimes sneaks it to bed and stays up all night watching youtube videos). - My wife told my daughter that she had to be at least 13 to get on social media, and she is forbidden from it. That was half a year ago. I had always wanted to get my daughter to _earn_ her smartphone (and by extension, social media) through some sort of modern-day rite of passage. But over the months, I am more and more inclined to forbid her from social media until she graduates high school.

vlunkr 9y ago

This is a complex issue but I'm inclined to agree with you. Giving Facebook/Youtube the responsibility to censor content feels dangerous with the amount of influence they have. I know it's the "think of the children" thing, but I hope Youtube sees the outrage about these spammy kids channels and does something so they aren't suggested and autoplayed. To me that's a special case. Grown adults who see fake news on Facebook and take it as the truth regularly.. Is that really on Facebook to fix that?

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

Would be great for a community rating scheme where parents themselves could thumb up/down videos.