Family YouTube incident

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gzt

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#306942 5-Sep-2023 22:20

My child uses the family YouTube channel same one we all use. That was all good. The latest thing is Mario game videos. That's been all good.

All that was going well. Suggestion feed or whatever it's called has been good. Random cartoons come up, they get watched. Until today. I walked past and saw some pretty weird cartoon Mario stuff playing. What the?

- Who's pregnant with Mario's baby?
- Who is really baby Mario's father?
- The part I walked in on was something about perving in toilets

I'm sure it gets worse than that. @crewstories is the offending channel.

What can I do about this?

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#3124007 5-Sep-2023 22:57

Looking at history the pregnant episode has been watched a few times. That explains a weird question recently. I've gone through the history now and disliked the three or four other episodes in the history. Maybe that will help maybe not.

It's been good for a long time. This is so unfortunate. God! now I have to watch two hours of this crap to tomorrow to get some idea of what has gone into that little brain. Then I'm have to think about how to talk about that crap.

Little hands are only going to get YouTube Kids from here on. I'm feeling the parental fail believe me.

MadEngineer

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#3124008 5-Sep-2023 23:10

We went through similar where our son found some videos made with lego figurines that had weird content. Nothing too far out, just weird.

You’ll need to ensure device use is monitored, best achieved by making a rule that they can only be used in the family or dining rooms, positioned with the screen facing inwards so you can always see what’s going on at a glance and with enough volume that you can hear it.

Taking the device away for watching pointless videos helps. Ask your child, is this content useful or rubbish? Always offer another activity in its place - divert. “OOOK ITS FLOOR IS LAVA TIME AND WE HAVE TO BUILD A FORT!!!”

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

gzt

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#3124011 5-Sep-2023 23:33

Thanks for the advice much appreciated. I've been getting away with wall mounted tv off at the plug sometimes for the whole day. The tv won't turn on they soon find something else to do. Tv is now an occasional gap filler.

xpd

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#3124020 6-Sep-2023 06:59

Had exact same thing with our youngest, she loved little ponies, was watching fan made stuff on YouTube, then one day these extremely violent "little pony" videos started creeping in - all animated but yeah, not appropriate for a 3-4 year old. Unfortunately its just how the algorithm works.

XPD / Gavin

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cddt

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#3124023 6-Sep-2023 07:09

There have been a lot of articles on this. There is a lot of weird content which at best is rubbish churned out to satisfy the word salad of search terms which kids may use, at worst it is malicious.

YouTube Has Thousands of Disturbing Videos Targeted at Kids: Report (businessinsider.com)

YouTube for Kids is still is still churning out blood, suicide and cannibalism | WIRED UK

We have disabled auto-play and an adult has to approve and start the playing of any video - so it is on us to check it's not weird. Miss 4 currently enjoys "Dr Binocs" and I'm happy enough for her to watch one of those occasionally because I'm also learning new facts!

cddt

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#3124026 6-Sep-2023 07:23

If you don't want to expose them to the algorithm but do want to show them videos on youtube, an option is to use a downloader such as yt-dlp and then view the files locally on whatever device the children use.

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MikeAqua

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#3124102 6-Sep-2023 09:43

You ain't seen nothing yet.

By the time they're 14 you'll be wishing they were just watching questionable videos about Mario.

My personal view is that the best thing to do is discuss what they've watched and put it in context vs normality.

And then absolutely limit them to YouTube kids!

Mike

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#3124112 6-Sep-2023 10:21

We've found YouTube Kids has better (but not infallible) content restrictions than the full Youtube app. But yes, this is far from the first time some unsavoury content has masqueraded as kids content. Unfortunately just seems to be an occasional thing, and the best current option is unfortunately quite a manual supervision step. It would be nice, imo, to be able to have a way to set youtube to only allow playing videos from 'subscribed' creators, and restrict it via pin, so e.g. you can go and subscribe to creators who have a good history of making appropriate content, and then your child can only watch their stuff without needing a pin. If anyone knows if an existing way to do this, I'd love to hear it.

ANglEAUT

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#3124115 6-Sep-2023 10:27

cddt:

There have been a lot of articles on this. There is a lot of weird content which at best is rubbish churned out to satisfy the word salad of search terms which kids may use, at worst it is malicious.

YouTube Has Thousands of Disturbing Videos Targeted at Kids: Report (businessinsider.com)

YouTube for Kids is still is still churning out blood, suicide and cannibalism | WIRED UK

...

Thanks for finding those articles. I wanted to point out exactly the same.

xpd: ... Unfortunately its just how the algorithm works.

Just because it is like that, doesn't mean we have to accept it. Also, someone somewhere tuned the algo this way. Most likely to make more money, because it is "engaging"

Please keep this GZ community vibrant by contributing in a constructive & respectful manner.

rhy7s

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#3124143 6-Sep-2023 12:07

cddt:

If you don't want to expose them to the algorithm but do want to show them videos on youtube, an option is to use a downloader such as yt-dlp and then view the files locally on whatever device the children use.

During that phase of life I used a batch file to keep a network share of appropriate channels updated via youtube-dl as well as media from TVOKids, ABC iView, Cbeebies, PBS Kids, DVDs, etc. We didn't use the YouTube kids interface, they just use a PC in the main lounge on standard YouTube with SponsorBlock, uBlock Origin, and Enhancer for YouTube with the home settings set to go straight to their curated subscriptions list.

I periodically go through and do a "not interested run" through the suggestions but so much of it is atrocious that we stick to the subscriptions rather the algorithm. They only get three half-hour periods a week on watching gaming content as this category is full of such low quality content and seems to steer the algorithm towards utter crap. They don't have any hard limits on playing games.

Handsomedan

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#3124154 6-Sep-2023 13:00

Thank goodness my kids only ever watched Hardcore Prawn on the internet.

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gzt

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#3124168 6-Sep-2023 13:37

I hate to think what they might have seen if they tried to voice search on that.

gzt

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#3124170 6-Sep-2023 13:44

I appreciate the links to those articles. Both are dated five years ago long before my child's use. I believe it was significantly worse back then. It's been generally good for us in the period of use the way we've used it. Unfortunately that's come to an end more or less and we need to manage it differently.

gzt

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#3124171 6-Sep-2023 13:51

The comments above have reminded me this game watching period originally started with a voice search using the chromecast with google tv remote. The search was "Mario" and from then on we had games in the suggestion feed not a problem. From there months passed until this issue arose. It really was working well.

MadEngineer

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#3125180 8-Sep-2023 23:34

MadEngineer: Ask your child, is this content useful or rubbish?

Clearly some adults need to be asking themselves the same question https://i.stuff.co.nz/motoring/132901369/watch-youtuber-drops-whole-lamborghini-into-shredder

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

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