Comment by pascalxus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pascalxus | Hacker News Reader

I have a 2 year old daughter, so I can relate to how enthralling those baby bum videos can be to a 2 year old.

But, Human oversite is not "impossible",it's called "parenting" and we should try it some time. We removed the TV from the living room and put it in the guest room, now sits a beautiful painting in it's place in the main part of the living room. Our kid doesn't use our iphone and ipad, it's as simple as that. If she cries for it, then she cries for it - no big deal. Ever since we removed the TV, she doesn't even ask to see videos in the living room anymore. You just gotta set limits.

Is, responsibility for the self, such an arcane concept. If you choose to get ALL your news from one site: whether it be Facebook or Youtube, then of course there's a chance your not going to get the whole truth. It should be all of our responsibility to seek out better sources of news. Install a plugin? or find a better search engine or get a better App, or go to something reputable like NPR, new york times, the Guardian. Lots of alternatives out there, as long as we're not too lazy to seek them out. There's plenty of ways to diversify your news sources and verify the things you read and watch. There's got to be a plugin out there that blocks news from FB if that's what you want.

Part of the point of the article is that these systems have made the job of the parent (or the individual) much more difficult than it was in the past. Cutting the internet and TV out all tougher is certainly one way to prevent your child from being exposed to some of these algorithmic horrors, but shouldn't there be a way for parents to easily say "don't show horrific things to my child" to youtube? As the article points out, that's what built brands like Disney. They built a reputation on "safe for kids" and youtube (and twitter and facebook) have made it harder for those kinds of reputations to be built or to matter. On there internet, everyone is a dog.

What so much of this seems to boil down to is spam. It is kind of incredible that spam was shut down so effectively and completely in the world of email, but has persisted, much to everyone's detriment, on facebook/youtube/twitter/etc. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that spam fighting was a differentiator for different email clients, but facebook et al. are actually incentivized to have spam count as impressions.

Yes. Peppa Pig looks OK. The problem is if YouTube recommends or continues on to a video where a machine splices Peppa Pig with parody videos and gross-out videos and genuinely weird and disturbing stuff.

The problem isn't merely that that this stuff exists, but that it YouTube is recommending and autoplaying it.

This solves the problem for your family, but doesn't solve it at large. There will still be parents who let their kids watch this. There will still be impressionable youths watching nazi propaganda. There will still be gullible people watching "The earth is flat" videos.

Yes, this is a problem that you can solve for yourself by moving to a cabin in the woods and hunting and skinning deer, but that's just a bandaid.

But, even without Youtube, you still need to supervise their access to the internet. But, AI can help in this regard too. Just install some parental control plugin that only allows educational content to come onto the device. Set it up with a timer, so their not on the device all day.

> But, AI can help in this regard too. Just install some parental control plugin that only allows educational content to come onto the device.

That's what Youtube Kids purports to be. You're just suggesting sending in more trains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5JiPj9c98Y

Isn’t turning to AI what enables this to happen in the first place? My understanding is that is exactly what youtube kids IS. Unless you mean more accurate technology, in which case you should say that.

So, let them watch it? You and the GP are talking about different sets of people: A 2-year-old kid probably has no frame of reference to decide what to watch and what to avoid, so you step in - as the parent - and decide for them.

In all other cases, the solution lies in what the GP mentioned: Personal responsibility.

Sure, it's not nice to have teenagers get radicalized by Nazi propaganda, but I'd argue that this is not a failure of the content they have access to, but rather hints at serious issues in their life outside of Youtube. Same with flat-earthers (btw, serious question: What's the problem with people believing the world is flat exactly? You see them for the fool they are and move on, what's the big deal?): If someone chooses to educate themselves on that sort of conspiracy-theory, let them.

> What's the problem with people believing the world is flat exactly? You see them for the fool they are and move on, what's the big deal?

For Starters:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_controversies

https://letters2president.org/letters/18983

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexism

https://www.ushmm.org/educators/teaching-about-the-holocaust...

I mean, really? Come on, a stupid population is so obviously a bad idea. Remember the saying: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes? Guess what happens when everyone around you is stupid? Not like 23 chromosomes stupid, but 'Oh, the Earth is Flat' stupid. Good god man.

This is one of my worst nightmares, and seeing it become reality is very depressing. Slowly eroding education system, avalanche of fake, malicious, agenda-driven content from all around you, what's a man to do?

Downvote and move on.

Call it out when you see it happening, damn the consequences.

Generally, follow the responsibilities of citizenship (https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/learners/citizenship-right...):

Support and defend the Constitution.

Stay informed of the issues affecting your community.

Participate in the democratic process.

Respect and obey federal, state, and local laws.

Respect the rights, beliefs, and opinions of others.

Participate in your local community.

Pay income and other taxes honestly, and on time, to federal, state, and local authorities.

Serve on a jury when called upon.

Defend the country if the need should arise.

You're looking at this on a personal level; I'm trying to look at it on a bigger societal level. I don't want to live in a country populated by nazis and flat-earthers, no more than I want to live in a country where you can smoke in restaurants, drink and drive, or advertise cigarettes to children.

I might be able to see people for the fools they are, but I still have to live with them, live next to them, and live with the impacts they're having on society, and so will my children.

People keep bringing up nazi propaganda as if it's a serious threat, but is it? The most successful radicalization stories I've heard are about people being recruited into ISIS. The political echochambers that have the most reach are the censors at Google and the campuses they graduated from, stemming from the cult-like application of progressivism. The most pressing issue of science illiteracy is climate change denial, pushed by capitalist interests.

People are worried about the one ideology we are most inoculated against, and for which tens of thousands can be whipped into a frenzy to protest against, _even if no actual nazi event is taking place_. This is not a real issue. Neither is being upset that you're letting your kids be babysat by bots who make Sims machinima. If the author feels there's a flood of dangerous content out there, why is the article full of milquetoast embeds?

Climate denial videos would have been a much better example for me to use, rather than flat-earth videos.

This may not be Nazi propaganda, but it's certainly far-right propaganda:

https://twitter.com/justinhendrix/status/927335154707828736

Where are all these cult-like progressive echo chambers at Google when you need them?

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