YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children

Re:YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeti... by hnzix on Friday November 10, 2017 @06:23PM (#15673950)

This is just the latest iteration of how any website is only 7 Kevin Bacon clicks away from rotten.com.

The net is vast and infinite and funnels the human id.

Autotegenerated content will never be a clean feed until machine learning evolves.

Or to put it another way, teach your kids to talk with you if they see or experience something icky.

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Re:YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeti... by lliamander on Friday November 10, 2017 @06:32PM (#15674002)

And also don't allow access to an internet-enabled device without direct supervision until they are fairly mature.

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Re:YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeti... by craftyguy on Friday November 10, 2017 @08:23PM (#15674456)

Good luck with that one.

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Re:YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeti... by macawfish on Friday November 10, 2017 @09:20PM (#15674641)

My niece's dad bought her a phone. She's 3. What the fuck. My sister is not happy with it, but I don't think she feels like she has much power over the situation.

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Re:YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeti... by kibwen on Friday November 10, 2017 @09:46PM (#15674718)

"Uh-oh honey, looks like little Alice dropped her phone in the toilet again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

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Re:YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeti... by macawfish on Saturday November 11, 2017 @04:42PM (#15678342)

so sneaky. that's just the kind of sneaky thing a benevolently manipulative, savvy mother might do.

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Re:YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeti... by strathmeyer on Friday November 10, 2017 @09:16PM (#15674631)

You're not going to be able to convince people who benefited greatly from unfettered internet access in their youth to do that.

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Re:YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeti... by lliamander on Monday November 13, 2017 @02:45PM (#15689556)

I too benefited from relatively unfettered access to the internet as child, but as a 14-year old, not a 4-year old.

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Re:YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeti... by nvahalik on Friday November 10, 2017 @08:49PM (#15674555)

This.

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Re:YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeti... by jacobush on Friday November 10, 2017 @07:36PM (#15674280)

No! This is not about degrees of separation. It is about systematic abuse for profit.

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Re:YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeti... by hnzix on Saturday November 11, 2017 @06:43PM (#15678830)

> systematic abuse for profit

Autogenerating content targeted at kids is "systematic abuse for profit" in the same way that Disney holding focus groups is "abuse". The content is clearly entertaining to kids, or else there would be no economic incentive to create it.

The algorithm occasionally picks up some nasty troll content by accident (hence degrees of separation). It is clearly unintentional as it goes against the financial interests of the channels.

This is a long way from "zomg illuminati bot conspiracy subliminal evil content child abuse".

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Re:YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeti... by ImSkeptical on Friday November 10, 2017 @08:48PM (#15674550)

I wonder how much of this is kids not realizing they can skip videos. I'd like to do an experiment to see how quickly kids change the video for different categories of videos. Maybe they just like videos, and clicking randomly on child's links at the end of videos will eventually drop you into this maze.

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Re:YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeti... by colanderman on Friday November 10, 2017 @10:40PM (#15674877)

They 100% know they can. I've watched a 2-year-old with a phone skip through dozens of videos until they found a channel just saccharine enough to hold their attention for minutes until the phone was taken away.

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Re:YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeti... by justincormack on Friday November 10, 2017 @07:27PM (#15674249)

But you could use this to change the human id over time, not just reflect it.

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