YouTube Kids cleaned up its act | Hacker News Reader

YouTube Kids cleaned up its act

wsj.com

26 pointslxm57 comments

> younger consumers

what a phrase. we're talking about 5 year olds

maybe they should be forced to rebrand, YouTube Younger Consumers

As if 30 years ago kids weren't massive consumers of television and advertising content?

This sentiment often comes up on this topic, and it's a false equivalence. Television and advertising execs from 30 years ago didn't have the sheer massive volume of interactive data that the internet provides - TV from 30 years ago didn't know you were watching, and more importantly didn't change the program schedule based on what you, individually, watched.

TV from 30 years ago also didn't have legions of extremely highly paid PhDs scouring data whose sole job it is is to get 9 year olds hooked into watching more content.

57 years ago back in 1965 there was Soupy Sales and those "funny green pieces of paper with pictures of U.S. Presidents".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-OGy3Kh7yM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soupy_Sales#New_Year's_Day_inc...

There are no citizens, only consumers.

> The 9 -to-12-year-olds, the group of kids advertisers most want to reach as they start to acquire more pocket money

That is just so disgusting on so many levels. It's also the group advertisers want to target because they know their brains aren't fully formed yet and they're more susceptible to advertising BS than the rest of us.

> The feeling among many product managers and engineers was that if a platform was 99% safe, that was enough, according to one former executive. The point was to find a way to avoid human curation, the person said.

I wonder if the initial batch of engineers working on the product had kids. I remember being horrified when I read about some of the stuff people were finding on the app. It seemed unconscionable that a company would be make a product for kids and have that kind of content (ex: cartoon characters committing suicide).

Human curation, eh?

Will I be able to choose the ideology setting?

Not sure where Peppa Pig and Baby Shark land on the politics compas.

Wasn't Paw Patrol like US pro-police propaganda? (try saying that five times in a row)

It sure watches like it.

There are some amusing explanations as to how it's a fascist society:

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-fascist-state-of-paw-patrol/

"Paw Patrol is Giorgio Agamben’s nightmare, a country in which a permanent state of emergency exists, under which governments have limitless power to rule unilaterally. There is no society or even commerce in Paw Patrol, only the relentless unthinking force of the police state, ostensibly responding to a never-ending crisis. It is the most influential work of fascist art since Ezra Pound."

Also, Thomas the Tank engine apparently paints capitalism (as symbolized by the fat controller) in a too rosy light (once you see that pattern, being praised for being a 'really useful little engine" sounds positively evil).

Everything is political ... if you want it to be.

[1] https://slate.com/culture/2011/07/thomas-the-tank-engine-the...

I've seen the same argument used to paint it as Stalinist. I prefer this explanation, because it means Thomas is a Tankie Engine.

TTTE's record on electrification and addressing pollution is also iffy https://ttte.fandom.com/wiki/Welcome_Stafford!

Is this like Peppa Pig teaching racist because animals may be inter-species friends but never intermarry. Or the Good Dinosaur where each group can enjoy each others company, but they must go back to their kind.

I am curious why Daniel Tiger’s creators decided to incorporate a monarchy in that society.

Kids like princes and princesses, I would guess. It's a theme that goes way back in children's literature.

Probably because it's reusing existing characters from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, and they didn't change it.

I tried looking into why Mr Roger's Neighborhood had a monarchy (since the show is based upon that) but all I could find was references to him as an authority figure who cared about his people.

Given how intentional he was, I'm sure there's got to be an explanation for why he selected that. Unless it was just because it's the kingdom of make-believe, and hence has a king.

I think at the time, fantasy fiction was really popular. Stuff like King Arthur, Merlin, etc... 1963 was the release date for Disney's Sword in the Stone 4-5 years before Mr. Roger's Neighborhood in 1968. I imagine kings, queens, knights, and dragons were a common trope that children would be familiar with. Using a Mayor or Governor would require a lot more explaining for children to understand his role and have more political undertones. It also kind of made the land of make believe a little more fantastical.

Because Queen Sara Saturday and King Friday the XIII were from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, specifically the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, and that's where Daniel Tiger originated.

A funny piece, but oh boy that author sure has some Opinions they had to squeeze in there.

Paw Patrol is Canadian, so it's unlikely to be US pro-police propaganda. You might be mixing in details from this Onion article:

https://www.theonion.com/paw-patrol-writers-defend-episode-w...

It was briefly a touch point for the insane edges on either side of the spectrum that need to log off twitter a bit more often. The ultra-right was convinced liberal cancel culture was going to take it away from our kids. The ultra left saw it as a symbol of the police state. Meanwhile, most people don't give the show a second thought unless they have an 8 year old.

It's wild to see horse shoe theory play out over something so silly.

That was essentially a fictitious talking point used to demonstrate how out of touch defund police protesters were. No one was actually saying it.

I thought Mayor Humdinger, in the feature-length movie, was a swipe at Trump.

The whole point of Paw Patrol is to make an amusing show for kids, and to make money selling merchandise. The whole reason why they keep making more of it is because it sells. The only agenda is to make money. (Which I happily spend.)

Everything is political. It's just that some things are so comfortably deep inside the overton window you don't even see it that way.

/s?

Baby shark isn't exactly a commentary on neoliberalism.

Sure, but the decision to allow e.g. baby shark, and not dubbed Soviet children's cartoons about how good of a leader Stalin is, is certainly a political decision.

If you go deep enough, there are criticisms of the nuclear family structure which Baby Shark assumes lol

I'm familiar with some of them (primarily criticisms that the nuclear family is the /only/ acceptable family structure where other forms exist and are healthy) but simply presenting a nuclear family is fairly innocuous.

Well yea, but it does implicitly encode a definition of normality and that's a political statement. It's just so deeply ingrained it is not perceptible as nearly everyone involved in creation and consumption has that assumption.

EDIT: As I pondered this there are two more angles to consider. (a) Baby Shark is a product of South Korea is at war with North Korea and arguments against nuclear family structure are laid out in the Communist Manifesto (b) some people consider that nuclear family structures are not merely co-existing with other healthy structures, but that the nuclear structure is harmful and other models are superior.

I'm not trying to debate these points (not totally sure where I stand myself), but it's helpful to break through the bubble and see what assumptions cultural forces are embedding in media. You can imagine a Baby Shark that talks about the network of relations that care for baby instead of a hierarchical biological lineage.

I'm not sure that a tenuous link to communism based on the location of production, that doesn't make any appearance in the work itself, would be considered a political element (can't believe I just referred to baby shark as "the work").

I get what you're trying to point at but some things don't even make an implicit value statement like it would if baby shark somehow showed the nuclear family as an inherent good.

Regardless, that's enough media analysis of kids youtube songs for me for one day!

“Everything is political” is one of those technically true, but ultimately meaningless platitudes. Yeah sure, technically there is implicit ideology in everything, but there’s also a pretty vast difference between something that is passive and only has ideology by virtue of existing in the world and portraying it and something that is politically charged. Most of the time, the passive kind is too benign for anyone to care. There are exceptions, of course…

Peppa Pig is clearly somewhat authoritarian. Peppa has to do what Doctor Brown says, or else; likewise, Peppa needs to do what her parents say, and what her teacher says… What have they done to earn that authority? They've had it as long as Peppa has been alive, and will likely continue to do so forever.

Baby Shark is anarchist: “Baby Shark do do do do do” has no unjust hierarchies. It's not libertarian, though, because “sharks eat all the other fish” seems like a violation of the Non-Aggression Principle. (Then again, the sharks don't eat other sharks, so maybe there's a libertarian shark society that just doesn't consider the other fish to be people.) It's also anti-capitalist: “Baby Shark do do do do do” has no money, and no corporations. This places it in the lower left corner of the political compass.

What about Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom?

The royal family are fairies that use magic and are somewhat stupid but have a noble heart.

They rule over elves that use technology instead of magic and are usually wise and fixes the problems.

It looks like antimonarchy propaganda for me :) . (My 5 years old daughter likes the show.)

between the two known options, algorithm vs human curated, I would definitely be choosing human curated for my kids, despite knowing there will be a idealogical biases. What are you actually proposing?

How about neither? Let kids or parents curate themselves.

They can do that already.

Every minute more than 24 hours are uploaded to YouTube. What child has >2000 parents willing to watch it all?

Oh, you mean children shouldn’t use a computer unsupervised? That ship sailed a long time ago.

> Oh, you mean children shouldn’t use a computer unsupervised? That ship sailed a long time ago.

Depends on the definition of 'children' I think.

The 5 year old probably shouldn't be turned loose on an ipad, and probably neither should a 10 or 11 year old imho.

I could see an argument for 12 and up though.

Now, will people be careful about that? Absolutely not, but probably should.

> Oh, you mean children shouldn’t use a computer unsupervised? That ship sailed a long time ago.

Sailed? You are the parent. You have control over what your child does.

Were you able to with an algorithmic approach?

I don’t think the algo had an ideology lean though. It just showed you more of what you’ve already watched. Also not great.

I think it's a mistake to assume that algorithms don't have an ideology lean. Even if one wasn't (accidentally or intentionally) programmed in, it can certainly develop one.

All algorithms are designed with a purpose, and the purpose (when talking about the kind of product-defining content-prioritization algorithms being discussed) usually is grounded in value judgements. In a for-profit firm, especially, it may just be capitalist profit-maximization, but that is also an ideology.

You are ultimately in control of what your 5 year old watches.

https://archive.ph/bJxj8

This is as good time as any to introduce parents to [0]Blippi whom, apparently, kids adore. He is also known as Steezy Grossman, who among other accomplishments, pooped on his friend when [1]harlem shake was the rage.

[0]https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/blippi-...

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f7wj_RcqYk

EDIT: it's interesting that majority assume that my post was negative of Blippi. Personally I would not want my children to watch any adult pretending to be a child as a main source of entertainment (or education?). I thought his history, which he himself appears to be ashamed of, was interesting and an example of how you never know who really is behind the tube.

I personally don’t get the fuss about that video. It’s not reflective of the videos he makes today. The videos he makes today irritate me deeply and I try to have my kids watch them as little as possible, but I still don’t care about the poop video.

My boys love Blippi, and I think his content is really good as far as these things go, for preschool educational-entertainment content. He basically goes different places and shows kids things.

Ooof. That guy acts so infantile it's scary. Like a creepy grown man cosplaying as a toddler.

He was known as Steezy Grossman, and I don't see your point, besides trying to argue for some lame version of Victorian morality that because you did one thing a long time ago that you must be shamed into never doing anything else.

I submit that most biological parents are unfit to raise children, because they committed an indecent act at least once!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com