Ask HN: What to do about Childline sending kids to YouTube?
My complaints to them to ask them to stop have failed, so here I am looking for ideas from the community.
YouTube's own terms advise (apart from YouTube Kids) YouTube is for over 13s and under 18s must have parental permission. [2]
In 2019 I complained to Childline about their integrations with Facebook and YouTube [3].
Firstly, (and hopefully now removed), their site included ad tracking of kids whilst they sought help on their site.
But also, that YouTube wasn't appropriate for their audience. [3]
To understand...
In fresh browser profiles (no history, cookies, etc) visit Childline and their videos offer links to click through to Youtube.com - from there follow the content and adverts they show.
I quickly ended up in looping video recommendations (is Youtube broken) so repeated the experiment a few times and discovered ad content varied from the benign (finance products kids can't use and infant toys) to the weird (hypnosis therapy) to stuff that might not be quite right for kids with certain problems: diet pills, hair loss pills and high sugar drinks.
Luckily, the recommended video content I looked through wasn't too bad.
But, to recommend Youtube to kids who may well be online alone (Childline is a confidential service), means to recommend a platform that includes a whole variety of content they may end up on and there's some pretty gruesome stuff [4][5] on Youtube.
If you search online for social media harms for kids there's a load of research about why sites like YouTube are not great for kids (or adults, but we can look after ourselves) including its very nature being addictive... and for many kids they likely can navigate the risks, but kids using Childline are more likely to be kids who need a safe place and not needlessly directed towards something like YouTube.
Also, why would a children's charity want kids in a bad place to look at content published by an ad network that re-targets them on viewing habits? Before the internet, if kids had problems you'd recommend them to get advice confidentially from a professional healthcare worker, counsellor, doctor, priest, etc; not go ask the local landlord for a bunch of leaflets they've got behind the bar which Childline dropped off; which feels like the kind of habit we now have with kids going to YouTube for advice.
1: https://www.childline.org.uk/toolbox/videos/ 2: https://www.youtube.com/static?gl=GB&template=terms 3: https://markalanrichards.com/posts/2019-03-17-ad-tracking-of-childline/
The following content is not friendly to any age, but shows some risks for what kids can find: 4: Drill Rap murderers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F7gJQJl7YA 5: Video game decapitations? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wzI-Acv3Ss