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Comment by cowpig | Hacker News Reader

I don't believe in this kind of censorship and that medium article just reads like a bunch of alarmist nonsense to me.

I was exposed to tons of super-weird stuff on TV an the internet (adult swim, fat-pie, etc) and so were most of my friends growing up. I don't think it was problematic for any of us.

When you're a kid and something feels disturbing, you turn it off. Our society really doesn't give kids any credit for being autonomous and resilient.

Most of all, I don't like that one corporation has the power to "crack down" on a whim about what's appropriate for kids to watch on a global scale.

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> I don't believe in this kind of censorship and that medium article just reads like a bunch of alarmist nonsense to me.

Agreed, to some extent.

> When you're a kid and something feels disturbing, you turn it off

One of the arguments made in the original Verge article on this from February is that young children don't actually behave this way. In fact, if they did, this wouldn't be an issue, since the videos wouldn't be watched, and the motivation for making them would be gone.

I love mildly disturbing, uncomfortable and awkward entertainment. Salad Fingers and others were some of my favorite things when I was 12 or so. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. But the children this article mentions are much younger than that.

just as an anecdote, when my 3yo saw some videos she didn't like (i.e. she came across me watching something violent on TV) she asked me to turn it off, or backed in a corner where she couldn't see them, or walked away.

She also saw some odd nursery rhymes on youtube, but those didn't seem to annoy her.

Not all kids are the same, but I agree with the OP that we should maybe give the kids more credit.

These are some of the "most popular" child videos on YouTube. While I'd love to give the kids more credit, data shows otherwise.

the point was more that maybe most are not as disturbing to kids as we assume they are, not that kids will stop watching all of them.

My little brother watched "fist of the north star" with me when he was 5, where people literally explode and evil guys routinely lick blood off their blades, and he still grew up to be a balanced person, as far as I can tell.

Whether the videos are disturbing to kids is not the point, at all. Tons of things are not disturbing but harmful.

Your little brother grew up just fine doesn't mean my (hypothetical) kids will grow up fine.

Is it at all possible that these "weird" videos are not disturbing to children?

When you're a toddler, your brain is strongly updating all the weights and biases encoded inside the lump of goo behind your eyes. It's literally a years-long neural network training exercise, with all sorts of back-propagation and pruning. I can imagine very strong feedback loops between algorithmically-generated content and neural development with weird side effects.

I don't care that the content is violent per se. Whatever. We're robust against that. What I do care about is how the content is inhuman and engagement-optimized. We, as humans, are as defenseless against that sort of thing as the Dodo was to hunters.

It's one thing when you discovered porn in the 90's at the age of 12, versus being 5 years old and watching Spiderman rape & murder Elsa.

I'm sorry, but how is that difference?

Unless I take you wrong, do you claim that a child that watch cartonish spiderman forcing himself on Elsa, will end up child molesters or murderers themselves, then I would love to see some statistics, other that the fact your argument sounds reasonable on its face.

I don't know about rapists and murderers, but very young kids have started to rub against each other and according to my kindergarten teacher, it has exploded and happens a lot more than before. Anecdotal evidence, but if you believe her it doesn't only happen in that specific place. Spiderman shagging Elsa or playing with her tits certainly doesn't make the problem letter.

My guess though is that a lot of the kids watching that searched for just that because kids are a lot weirder than we like to believe.

>When you're a kid and something feels disturbing, you turn it off.

Do you realize these are the "most popular" child videos on YouTube? Gosh, the fact that these people are making money off of it is proof that "kids" are watching these videos, and are apparently not capable of "just turning them off". Yeah right, maybe that happened to you. I'm not confident my (hypothetical) kid watching these videos can turn them off, at all.

Can you please not claim "censorship", "evil corporation", "global scale", "alarmist", and look at this issue directly? GOSH, these are objectively bad issues, and why can't you just not let children see them? Not everyone out there is trying to "brainwash" your kids. The world is a better place without these videos.

These are bad videos. Children should not be shown these videos. I applaud YouTube for "censoring" these things.

If you're the kind of parent that feels "this is censorship", "no one should tell my kid not to watch these videos", and "my kids are totally okay with watching these videos", then I really think you need some serious help.

The kids are choosing what they want to watch and it doesn’t fit societies made up ideal for what children should want to watch. It’s scary just like rock and roll was scary 50 years ago.

I am only hearing the exact same moral panic arguments given about Elvis’s hips.

Just because you don’t like something and can’t understand why someone else would, doesn’t make it bad.

You are just too old to see the value in things your child likes. It’s a tale as old as time.

You’re very insistent these are bad but I don’t really see why. I would consider many of these absurdist works of art, yet we don’t cover children’s eyes from the likes of Pollock.

Yes, these videos are bad. The reasons are clearly listed in the article and the video in it.

"5 years old and watching Spiderman rape & murder Elsa" is never something you should let a child watch. I'm sorry, but this is not something Pollock would ever cover. This is child pornography level of stuff. Or, are you saying that is also something perfectly fine for any audience?

I'm really amazed by the mental gymnastics one has to perform to compare these videos to Pollock and Rock and Roll.

Explain the actual harm. Enumerate it. I get that you don’t personally like it, and thus don’t want your child to watch it, but do you think it’s going to make your child a rapist?

I'll cite a fellow HN user: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15674870

Or this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15674305

Or how about this medium article? https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-in...

Many people have presented their case on this issue. In this thread or elsewhere. Please don't pretend they don't exist by saying "Explain the actual harm. Enumerate it." Where's your proof that these videos are harmless or even beneficial to children?

Again, you are only proving the Elvis moral panic argument. Other commentators agreeing with you doesn’t make a case.

I'm sorry, but this is not just "Other commentators agreeing with you". Those arguments are, in fact, sufficient for me to believe that these videos are harmful to children.

When you're a kid and something feels disturbing, you turn it off.

[citation needed]

Common-sensical dismissals of something are often just a way of declingin to address an actual problem. I find it really easy to think of contexts in which kids keep watching this stuff even though they don't like it an its scaring them. You might not have done it, but you might not have any experience of autistic spectrum disorders, for example.

It's like saying people should just ignore trolls on the internet or any of many other nominally helpful cliches that actually dismiss the concerns of people who are dealing with problems.

I appreciate that they crack down on content that is obviously designed to hurt and traumatise.

Not one of the cited videos in the article was a example of something that is 'designed to hurt and traumatise'

no, sorry, you've lost touch with reality or don't have kids you care about or both. if i read this stuff and my mind goes "holy crap this is just sick, the !@#$ who created that content has to be executed" - it is enough of an indication for me that no kid should ever be exposed to that.

not only creators of such content should get jailtime, youtube has to pay fines for each child-minute streamed even if it drives alphabet into bankruptcy.

No. You lost touch with reality. None of the cited videos were traumatizing. It's an insane statement to make. Kids live through wars and horrific abuse or neglect. Those things are 'traumatic'. You're freaking out over YouTube videos that are kind of weird.

TIL if kid's not injured by a grenade or raped - he's fine, nothing to worry about.

I agree. They are designed to get as many views from kids. Them being traumatic may be a side effect, but not the goal.

'traumatic' is way overstating it.

How do you know you and your friends turned out fine?

I don’t mean to be accusatory, but I wonder what scale we’re using when we’re saying that this sort of content is “harmful”. I doubt people are implying that watching these videos will turn kids into psychopaths.

Well, violence is a pretty good metric. And that has not budged one bit since the introduction of the internet or violent games for that matter.

A lot of claims, both in the original Medium article and in this thread, are made on the effects disturbing content has on humans.

I am not saying that these videos are something we should allow, but let's get our facts straight on its effects first.

> Most of all, I don't like that one corporation has the power to "crack down" on a whim about what's appropriate for kids to watch on a global scale.

This is the real problem. We need to break the platform monopoly ASAP.

But how do we know you're not some maladjusted weirdo?

I agree with this. When I first started browsing the Web I'd occasionally see weird and disturbing things. I'd then try to avoid them, recognize the signs of things that looked "off". I think this might have lead me to develop more careful browsing habits that make me a safer user today.

How can you possibly avoid it if the only thing you know is the home screen and sb always filled it with those pretty .. fuck.

Thats the problem with somebody else filling the homescreen. I never saw it that way.

So what kind of homescreen would be best for a kid?

I agree. When I read the original I expected violence and gore videos put together by trolls to freak out kids. And I thought the article was a total waste of time. We live in the age the mob.

Videos where peppa the pig gets tortured by a dentist and turns into a robot don't count as violence?

Yeah, and it's tamer than pretty much any episode of Ren & Stimpy.

If I had a kid, I would not want them watching Ren & Stimpy until they were mentally prepared for it.

I remember the show being a wonderful subversive work of art. I also remember it being nightmare fuel when I was as old as 11. If a young child ends up watching a Ren & Stimpy equivalent just because YouTube recommended it, or more likely, watching something just as edgy but without the quality -- that too is a problem.

>I also remember it being nightmare fuel when I was as old as 11.

You were a sheltered, sensitive child.

Jesus. When you write it like that I have visions of a horror film full of gore. It's an intellectually dishonest statement because the video is so tame - at best, slightly weird.

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