>Whether these videos are deliberately malicious, “merely” trolling, or the emergent effect of complex systems, isn’t the point. That's an extraordinarily naiv

>Whether these videos are deliberately malicious, “merely” trolling, or the emergent effect of complex systems, isn’t the point. That's an extraordinarily naive statement and it's baffling that the author even questions the obvious intent and, worse, reaches the conclusion that intent isn't important here. He then goes on to say the problem is with the platforms, algorithms, etc. While these have their issues, I think he overweights them by a good bit, and they are secondary to this particular subject. That is, if the algorithms weren't being abused, then they would be just fine for their intended purpose. The problem here is that the content they are working on is problematic to say the least. Specifically, someone is clearly and deliberately targeting children with disturbing videos that promote extreme violence associated with themes and characters they think to benevolent and loving. He then completely acknowledges this in the following nugget: >Previously happy and well-adjusted children became frightened of the dark, prone to fits of crying, or displayed violent behaviour and talked about self-harm – all classic symptoms of abuse. So, the harm is specific and clear. How can he then dismiss this as possible happenstance of secondary importance? We also live in a culture where people are being radicalized online and children are now being murdered in schools en masse, frequently by other (slightly older) children. Does the author not see a thread here? Now, broaden the context further to consider the armies of troll-bots, etc. on our platforms that we know are being weaponized against us to incite anger, division, etc. There can be no other conclusion except that we are under a sustained attack to divide and destroy our society, and now children are being included on the target list. This is not some randomly generated content to game platform algorithms for ad revenue that just happens to be disturbing. It is specifically effective in damaging children and is rooted in a very particular line of psychological attack.