Suicide instructions spliced into kids’ cartoons on YouTube and YouTube Kids | Hacker News Reader

Suicide instructions spliced into kids’ cartoons on YouTube and YouTube Kids

arstechnica.com

59 pointsMrMember33 comments

I want to know who is behind this content. Part of me thinks that a site with such open access is easily susceptible to this kind of sabotage from competitors, but getting this kind of dirt on your hands would be company-ending if it got back to you.

The question is: why do people do this? Some of these channels aren't small so it can't be only some kids on 4chan having a laugh; some are giant content farms that seem to be managed as a coordinated, money-making business.

See also: Elsagate.

Relatedly, what is the monetization strategy for this sort of content? How could it possibly be worth more money than non-creepy children's content?

Maybe this content is equally soul sucking for the creator and the consumer, and what started as a cynical click farm grew into Fight Club-esque detachment?

Seems more likely than being part of an ongoing effort to destabilise society by disseminating disquietude and distrust, probably.

We live in a society where fake news, anti-vaxxers and flat earthers run amock and are convincing more and more people that it's an "us vs them" and there is a giant evil government conspiracy behind everything.

It's extremely cheap for say, Russia to throw a few bucks at some random bloggers, YouTubers, content creators and fringe groups causing enough distraction and chaos in society that all the good things we create end up being poisoned and society crumbles. (direct or indirect, it doesn't matter - advertising/sponsors/fake news/guest blog posts yaddy yaddy yadda)

Videos like this have two courses of action - they cause turmoil - people see this as bad behavior that should be stopped and is immoral and corrupt but then they have a trigger response.

The response to this content, conspiracy, turmoil justifies their means. When government/regulators/youtube step in and ban it then that is "big ol guvment and conspiracy and big brother violating their rights"

Which begs the question of why in ANY democracy its citizens would be fighting to poison its democracy unless there is an external force funding, supporting and training these actors. Or is there just a growing psychosis we're ignoring of people with mental problems we're ignoring?

Anti-vaxxers and flat earthers are perfect fulfillments of American values. Watch just about any Hollywood movie or popular YA novel, isn't it always about a bunch of losers discovering a conspiracy, being ignored or hindered by all the supposed experts and authorities, and joining forces with other miscontents to stop it?

Your Russia comment may have just been a throwaway idea, but it is also a good example of one of these stories. The literal losers of an election invent a conspiracy to rally themselves around because it is really hard to accept that they lost.

On your first point, No... The typical YA novels and the growing up American story is the pain and suffering of teenagedom not throwing away all of our knowledge that the world is some giant conspiracy - that's largely an older age demographic - for some reason, people over the age of 50 love conspiracies. If you pay attention, a lot of young people are sneaking out to get vaccines and not telling their parents because quite frankly, they don't want to die from their parents mistakes. Anyay.. It wasn't until recently - the last 8-10 years that copnspiracy theories were used largely for cover ups politically - if you project enough you blame your opponent for things you're doing and hopefully you maintain power to impose your views. that's what we're running against.

To your second point. Lol. Your language suggests that losers are only mad because they lost and you frame it in an overly simplistic way - ignoring the fact that Trump's campaign is under investigation and has what, 34 indictments? If that is a conspiracy theory then conspiracy theory has no meaning and well... good luck.

I was thinking of books like harry potter, the maze runner, series of unfortunate events, hunger games, divergent. Maybe conspiracy isn't the right word, it doesn't exactly fit hunger games.

I don't agree that it is mainly the olds who fall for conspiracy theory. In fact, I think that sort of thinking among young people is a sort of conspiratorial idea... The dumb boomers didn't vaccinate so its up to us young people to brave the odds vaccinate ourselves (even though only 1.3 percent of children are unvaccinated, it is unclear for what reason in every instance, and 50 year olds typically aren't in charge of vaccinating kids because... 50 year olds usually don't have children for obvious reasons. It is gen x and millenials not vaccinating their kids...). Again, conspiracy isn't exactly the right word. "Conspiracy theory" is just a tool to accomplish the same thing. I don't know exactly what it is... Give oneself some sort of importance?

The man in the video goes by the name Filthy Frank. Here is at least one other video of him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnlyr46WbRA

Sounds like ordinaryradical is asking who is the one splicing in these kind of clips into the kid's video.

Perhaps a more relevant clip for this scenario would be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k0SmqbBIpQ

What has gone wrong in the mind of an adult who thinks it's funny to teach children how to commit suicide? I can't even wrap my head around this...

They aren't.

“Remember, kids, sideways for attention, longways for results,”

It's a joke.

It was a joke when Filthy Frank said it, but someone edited that clip into a video for children. There's nothing funny about that, at all.

I've never liked advertising companies and have noticed a downward trend in the moral implications of different advertising business models.

The least creepy IMO is when you would see a television or radio host cut away to promote a product which directly tied the content creator to the promotion.

Later that became less common and advertisers approached content aggregators like Television networks who maintained a carefully curated collection of content this wasn't too bad.

The current trend of advertising companies selling ads on non-curated, user generated content seems to have crossed a line where major problems are just inherent. I think a better arrangement would be if Google and Facebook allowed content creators and advertisers to directly connect thereby allowing each to choose what sort of brands match their particular image.

If only there was a program with YouTube where you could advertise against preferred content...

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/products/google-preferred/

That's kind of half-way there, but there doesn't seem to be a way for advertisers to actually choose specific channels to maximize brand-fit just packages of channels deemed "brand safe" which is a very generic term.

Also there is no direct connection between content creators and advertisers allowing both parties to safeguard their respective images.

Edit: Typo

I'm pretty ok with linustechtips and benheckshow ads for this reason. It's done by the host IN the program, not some post production splicery that can be abused long after the content is created.

Not quite as overt as "longways for results", but the cartoons I watched as a kid had plenty of suicidal references: https://youtu.be/PFDKWbg2xjg

It’s interesting to me that the majority of those suicides are by gun. Only one is a hanging which fails, two jump and another is implied on the train lines.

It's incredibly hard for me to wrap my mind around the who and why of this.

It's obvious whatever efforts they're taking to curate YouTube for kids is not enough if bad actors can slip in such horrifying content into videos.

Maybe whitelisting channels for youtube kids is the only solution.

I was kind of surprised that it didn't already operate on a whitelist. It seems irresponsible to market user generated content to kids without checking that the content is suitable for them.

In my house there is no free access to YouTube for children. I wouldn't even whitelist a channel, because maybe somebody buys that channel and makes it weird. Maybe if I run across a video that I think is good we will watch it together, but there is no chance they get to click down the "recommended" rabbit hole unattended.

Teaching kids to be paranoid of everything isn't good either. If your child is too innocent they won't know the difference when someone ask them to do something that is wrong. Far before they're the age of 18 they need to be able to fend for themselves unless if you plan to keep your child under your wing forever.

I know a couple people who let their 4+ yo kids use smartphones and tablets with apps like YouTube kids. I can't wrap my head around it. If there'd be anything exclusively on YouTube I'd want kids to watch I'd probably download it first, check all the footage in its entirety and only then let them watch it, on the TV, not some small screen they hold right into their faces.

Parents who have both the time and energy to do that probably aren't going to watch YouTube anyway.

I dont think so; it's a one time investment for clips your kids might watch dozens of times. Sure, it's not feasable for following a channel that uploads daily, but let's say there's a bunch of children's songs with animation you consider well done. Spend an afternoon ripping them and have them watch it every now and then over the next year.

I laughed when I saw George muller (the guy behind filthy frank an awful channel about suicide, offensive jokes and dark humor). Quick run down he did in 2016-2017 free green screen and slowly after became a meme and put in videos. The guy now does music known as "joji".

Netflix at $10 a month seems like a bargain. Binge watching dragons' edge isn't great but at least you know it's _just_ dragon's edge...

fuGoogle.

Disney+ looks like it will be interesting.

https://www.techradar.com/news/disney-streaming-service-disn...

don't think you can blame joji for this? someone else using his old satire/edge videos in this way.

but, i kinda wish they would public say who/what channel it was from. so we can look into it.

i mean, i know Youtube has a huge issue with these wacked out game model "animated" kid videos.

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