WhatFinger


Monster lurking under your child’s bed has been lurking there since 2015

Parents need to tell Google to Take.Their.YouTube-Kids-App. Down



Parents need to tell Google to Take Their YouTube-Kids-App Down Generations Y (Millennials) and Z (Centennials): this is what your little children are now watching on shocking, mass-distributed Internet videos. In so-called ‘child-friendly’, ‘family-friendly’ cartoons of the day, millions of your children are watching Spider-Man urinating on Elsa from ‘Frozen’; Mickey Mouse hit by a car and lying there dying in front of a crying Minnie; Pippa the Pig being tortured while screaming and crying. (Video via NY Post, Nov. 9, 2017)
Monster lurking under your child’s bed has been lurking there since 2015 This is adult-approved small fry fare? “How about My Little Pony-themed pedophilia jokes, or watching Bert and Ernie dubbed with a profanity-laced quarrel from Martin Scorsese's mobster film “Casino”? (Mercury News, May 18, 2015) Even parents would be shocked by the New York Post video showing what these children's’ videos are really all about. How can little kids being forced into funeral mourner roles for a blood-covered Mickey Mouse come from anything good? The CEOs of multinational corporations who insist on making a new world the way they want it are dragging children into a strategy they think will take them there. Surely, politicizing children through video watching is flagrant child abuse. Parents, leave the light on in the bedroom because there really is a monster hiding under your child’s bed, the one waiting to drag little ones off to a world of the most unimaginable nightmares. And the monster lurking under your child’s bed has been lurking there since 2015. Google’s 2015-launched YouTube Kids App has opened the dark door for violent, sexually explicit and childhood trauma in the one place parents thought their children would be safe: watching cartoons. Unfortunately, tech-friendly children and some of their unknowing parents are Googling one thing but bringing up another.

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Children's cartoons are no longer that happy place genius Walt Disney created to make pyjamaed small fry giggle at the antics of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse while eating cereal in front of their Saturday morning television sets. Those days are long gone. Not only have they all but vanished, they’ve been replaced by Internet cartoon viewing, where compared to television watching, 87 percent of children, 12 years of age and younger are tuned in to Google’s ‘Child-Friendly YouTube Kids App. “In recent months, parents like Ms. (Staci) Burns have complained that their children have been shown videos with well-known characters in violent or lewd situations and other clips with disturbing imagery, sometimes set to nursery rhymes. Many have taken to Facebook to warn others, and share video screenshots showing moments ranging from a Claymation Spider-Man urinating on Elsa of “Frozen” to Nick Jr. characters in a strip club. (NY Times, Nov. 4, 2017)
“This scene from a video on YouTube Kids shows Mickey Mouse in a pool of blood while Minnie Mouse watches, aghast. “Malik Ducard, YouTube’s global head of family and learning content, said that the inappropriate videos were “the extreme needle in the haystack,” but that “making the app family friendly is of the utmost importance to us.” “While the offending videos are a tiny fraction of YouTube Kids’ universe, they are another example of the potential for abuse on digital media platforms that rely on computer algorithms, rather than humans, to police the content that appears in front of people — in this case, very young people"
“Google said in a written statement Monday that it works to make the app's videos "as family-friendly as possible" and takes feedback very seriously, removing inappropriate videos flagged by users.” (Mercury News, May 18, 2015)

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You shouldn’t have to “flag” Google to be assured of the well being of your children

You shouldn’t have to “flag” Google to be assured of the well being of your children.
“In an interview shortly after introducing YouTube Kids, its product manager, Shimrit Ben-Yair, told the San Jose Mercury News that the mobile app uses a "two-step process" to select kid-friendly content from the 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube each minute. (Mercury News) “The first step is to "algorithmically narrow it down to family-friendly content," she said. “The second involves Google employees doing a "manual sampling for quality control, to see if it's family-friendly.” “But that filter is not working, according to advocates and some parents who wrote reviews on the Google Play and iTunes stores documenting how their children discovered violent, sexually explicit or other jaw-dropping content. “The complaint being filed with the FTC is just the latest headache for Google's attempted leap into the toddler tech market. “(Dale) Kunkel was part of a coalition of prominent child advocacy and consumer groups that filed an April complaint with the FTC accusing YouTube Kids of being overly commercialized, inundating young children with ads and promotional content that would not be allowed on broadcast television. “The FTC said at the time it would look into the complaint.
That videos that are disturbing children who slip past google’s filters—“either by mistake or because bad actors have found ways to fool the YouTube Kids algorithms” should be of little consequence. Parents who care about how their children are being traumatized by YouTube videos should go after Google with this message: Take.The.App.Down. Generations Y, Z, protect your children from sexually explicit and shocking videos because if you don’t, no one else will.


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Judi McLeod -- Bio and Archives -- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

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