On YouTube’s Digital Playground, an Open Gate for Pedophiles

[Deleted member 19003]

Honestly, this is the truth - I have a 4 year old and I initially was on instagram (private account), rarely posting photos (maybe once every month or two) but then read articles like these and realized I am making choices for her that she will be unable to undo for the rest of her life, and worse, Facebook will fucking own the photos forever. I closed and deleted my IG account and haven't looked back since.

But there's just a huge hoard of parents in my social circle that are posting pics of their kids almost daily.

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Great article.

My family and friends thought I was weird for years because I never share pics or information about my children on social media, while many of them have exhaustive daily updates. I only ever offered to personally email photos, or give Christmas cards.

I do not want to have my children personal pictures and lives exposed online before they could even understand what social media was. Once online, forever online. Some of the embarrassing pictures and stories people post of their children is shameful really.

 

[Deleted member 2809]

I don't get why youtube isn't proactive in any fixing of their platform. Everything they implement is either broken or years too late. It probably isn't hard for them to use their systems to identify the age of someone in a video, and not recommend that video. But then again, their platform is already a mess that they refuse to fix.

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If you wonder why youtube does or doesn't do something, it's always about money.

 

[signal]

It seems like you can take any innocent topic, go to Youtube, keep clicking on the recommendations, and you'll end up in hell.

I'm constantly pissed that my science / nature interest constantly leads to recommendations for anti-science / conspiracy bullshit.

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It's funny that the more related the videos are, the 'darker' they seem to become, but the more unrelated recommendations that get viraled out to people are always pretty wholesome.

 

[Deleted member 52442]

youtube just banned minors from streaming unless with an adult

https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/youtube-bans-kids-live-streaming-1203231457/

 

[Volimar]

^ It's a step I guess, but it would have been a lot better to just turn off recommendations on kids videos, but $$$. Can't wait to see the loopholes.

I am so glad my kid turned 18 before he had access to a phone that could record video. I already had to veto some of his facebook pictures to his dismay.

 

[Deleted member 3058]

Just saw this article and was checking if there was a thread on this. Everything I read about the YouTube algorithm is horrible.

I've turned off autoplay because of a single bad interaction with it (put on a let's play, fell asleep, and woke up to a video extolling the extermination of Muslims) and I can't imagine how much of a hellhole it must be for people who continue to use it.

I know the thing must have crazy efficiency at driving "engagement" but at some point they need to seriously hunker down and rewrite it from scratch to make it less toxic.

 

[Dekuman]

Not going to mention names but there is a YouTube famous person who was uploading videos as a preteen. His 3DS vids has 400-500K to 1 million views and this was before his sub count blew up with actual subs of people who watched his gaming content when Switch came out. His channel was sub 100k channel but had videos with millions of views. Even with his larger sub count now that YT.is his job his new videos don't get nearly as many views


I always wondered if it was pedos watching a good looking pre teen talking on camera about his 3DS and not for his Gaming content

 

[MistaTwo]

I have a hard ban on Youtube in my house for the last year or so.
My kids might get to see some train videos etc. on our phones while we are out of the house, but I have went in and disabled every goddamn YouTube app I can find on our home devices.

 

[OtherWorldly]

Why not simplify why it and have recommendations based off of tagging of videos.

If a video is incorrectly tagged users can report and YouTube and remove or add.

This way YouTube doesn't have to put their crappy algorithm in the field to recommend unrelated videos


Also a pet peeve. These videos of kids bathing should be private and they are your home videos. Don't make these videos public , no one wants to see your home videos

I have a hard ban on Youtube in my house for the last year or so.
My kids might get to see some train videos etc. on our phones while we are out of the house, but I have went in and disabled every goddamn YouTube app I can find on our home devices.

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How do they use videos such as khan academy

 

[TheAbsolution]

^ It's a step I guess, but it would have been a lot better to just turn off recommendations on kids videos, but $$$. Can't wait to see the loopholes.

I am so glad my kid turned 18 before he had access to a phone that could record video. I already had to veto some of his facebook pictures to his dismay.

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Because some of their most popular channels are of kids videos which are obviously clearly monitored by the parents and an outright ban would hurt those creator's negatively. It's not particularly easy for the algorithm to differentiate between channels that are obviously supervised between ones that are not. They're obviously trying to walk a fine line of not hurting creators and keeping pedophiles from watching inappropriate videos of kids.