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Self-Harm Clips Hidden in Kids' Cartoons (bbc.com) 155

Posted by msmash from the growing-concerns dept.
Children's charity the NSPCC has accused YouTube of failing to tackle dangerous content on its youth channel. From a report: YouTube Kids, dubbed as a safer, child-friendly version of the video-sharing site, has been criticised by parents for failing to remove cartoons that contain clips depicting suicide methods on its platform. The clips show a YouTuber demonstrating a suicide method. Google told the BBC it works hard to remove such content. "We have strict policies that prohibit videos which promote self-harm. We rely on both user-flagging and smart-detection technology to flag this content for our reviewers," the firm said in a statement. "We are always working to improve our systems and to remove violat[ing] content more quickly." It is unclear how or why the clips depicting suicide methods were embedded in children's cartoons. The BBC has received no response from the YouTuber. It also asked Google, which owns YouTube, if it had spoken to him directly but did not get a reply.
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Self-Harm Clips Hidden in Kids' Cartoons

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  • No more YT kids for my kids (Score:3)

    by Danathar ( 267989 ) on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @03:18PM (#58184800) Journal
    My wife and I had just about removed all instances from the rokus. It's all gone now. Trust is violated. Not sure how Google gets us back (if ever)
    • There's lots of bad things out there in the world. Shielding your kids from it is largely pointless. You're better off just explaining it to them to the limits of their understanding. That way they don't develop morbid fascinations with anything.

      My kid very, very briefly tried to "rebel" with music. I showed her the kinds of music me and my brother grew up with (Slayer, Gore Guts, Testament, etc) and that made it all kind of pointless right there. These days the only "rebelling" she does is trying not t
      • Q. What kind of music will the next generation of teens listen to?
        A. Whatever seems to be most shocking to the adults.

        • Q. What kind of music will the next generation of teens listen to? A. Whatever seems to be most shocking to the adults.

          If they really want to fry our taters, they'll listen to old school Bluegrass.

      • Re:Or you could just get over it (Score:5, Interesting)

        by nwaack ( 3482871 ) on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @03:57PM (#58185088)

        There's lots of bad things out there in the world. Shielding your kids from it is largely pointless. You're better off just explaining it to them to the limits of their understanding. That way they don't develop morbid fascinations with anything.

        Except that YouTube Kids was supposed to be a safe place with procured content, and it clearly isn't. Maybe you don't mind exposing small children to this type of crap, but I sure as hell am going to keep it to a minimum if I can help it.

        • The schools in my area were briefly allowed to use YouTube kids for videos in class. They even had different channels for different types of videos - all were supposed to be screened for offensive content. It lasted 3 days before a video that had very inappropriate scenes was discovered by a 2nd grade class. The school dropped it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I don't have YouTube Kids on any of my devices because I believe in spending time with and coaching my young children while we're on the internet. BUT -

        Shielding your kids from it is largely pointless.

        We're talking about a platform geared towards toddlers and kindergartners, you fucking retard. Talking is great and all, but try explaining the concept of wanting to end your own life to someone who can't yet functionally grasp the concept of death. Jesus Christ you're stupid.

      • Re:Or you could just get over it (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @04:23PM (#58185260)

        Shielding your kids from it is largely pointless. You're better off just explaining it to them to the limits of their understanding.

        That depends on the age of the kid. There is not much a 13 year-old needs to be sheltered from. But there is plenty a 5 year-old should not see.

        YouTube kids to targeted at 3 to 8 year olds. The "shielding" is its raison d'etre.

        • I saw Heavy Metal when I was 6 (we had cable) and the only thing I remember was the girl riding the bird and the way the bird sounded until I saw it years later as an adult.

          It's like those bad "adult" jokes in kids movies where they go over their head.

          You're right it does kind of defeat the purpose of YouTube Kids though.

          • The risk I feel you're overlooking here is that kids at these young ages will mimic stuff they see, because they don't yet have the depth of understanding required to determine which actions are dangerous.

            It's not the possibly-immoral-or-disagreeable things that people are concerned about. It would be the video that shows someone stabbing or harming themselves, or eating poisonous things (hello tide-pods!) that cause the outrage. On their own, the kid might not think to try this, but once they see someone e

        • I generally agree, but, to be pedantic, you can probably explain anything *reasonably age appropriate +/- 10% to kids under seven and 15% 7-15, or something like that (intended only as example). But there are things that can break fully formed adults. You can't expect children with no emotional toolbox to deal with some things. That is the literal but abstract meaning of torture - taking someone to a place they have no rational/emotional means of dealing with. That breaks people.

        • But there is plenty a 5 year-old should not see.

          Child me utterly hates you for this. Fuck you.

          Adult me appreciates that you are trying to protect your children, but thinks that censoring reality hurts the child more than reality itself does. At worst, reality can kill your child. At worst, censorship leads to severe mental issues and an inability to deal with reality. Which situation is worse?

          (don't take the fuck you personally, i am not saying that as an adult)

    • Re:No more YT kids for my kids (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Frobnicator ( 565869 ) on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @03:32PM (#58184906) Journal

      It's all gone now. Trust is violated. Not sure how Google gets us back (if ever)

      The problem is the lack of consequences for their actions.

      A troll creates a channel, grabs a bunch of (infringing) videos, inserts the self-harm clips as described, and laughs as their view count increases. If they are ever discovered, their maximum consequence is having the account terminated, and they can trivially create another one.

      If instead they discover there is a near-100% chance that the face child endangerment charges, child abuse charges, reckless endangerment charges, and more, it would drop. There are still some sick people who would still occasionally do it, but if they faced consequences for their actions the vast majority would stop.

      Unlike the free-for-all version, the child-centric YouTube Kids failed at their promise. They claimed they were going to have carefully curated content that was age appropriate. What they should have done, in addition to actually having humans curate the content, would be to verify the others creating and updating content through background checks and validated identities. Thus anyone who wanted to post would could not do so under the shroud of anonymity, and once their harmful content was discovered it would be followed not only by an online takedown, but by officers at the door with an arrest warrant for felony crimes for each and every violator.

    • Have you ever watched Looney Tunes? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's basically just one long self harm series. Same thing with The Three Stooges

    • The clip being debated (if you follow the links back to the original blog post on pedimom.com) is almost certainly this scene from Family Guy [youtube.com], not something mysterious like a razor blade in a candy apple. It definitely didn't belong on YouTube Kids, but you should think twice about that before deciding how to react.

  • Easy answer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @03:22PM (#58184826)

    It is unclear...why the clips depicting suicide methods were embedded in children's cartoons.

    People are dicks.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by iggymanz ( 596061 )

      Answer is Millenials are soft and impressionable and triggered by everything.

      The ol' classic cartoons had characters preparing to off themselves. Tom and Jerry, Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote, Bugs Bunny etc.

      No one in my elementary, middle or high school committed suicide, imagine that.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        >No one in my elementary, middle or high school committed suicide, imagine that.

        HUGE citation needed. Cause you're so full of shit it's coming out of your earls

        • If he went to a small school, it's highly probable that no one committed suicide at any of his schools, while he was in school. Elementary school children are really unlikely to kill themselves, same for people in middle school. The current rate for teen suicide (in boys at least) is only around 14 per 100,000 according to most sources I could find. Napkin math says you'd need a little over 1,000 boys in your high school before it becomes as likely as not for one of them to commit suicide while you're in hi

          • No big Chicago suburb.

            We had deaths by accident, crime and disease.

            No suicides, not even in high school.

            This was 60s and 70s.

        • No, you are young.

          I was in school 1960s 1970s.

          Not like todays' wusses.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Easy answer (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @04:28PM (#58185278)

        Answer is Millenials are soft and impressionable and triggered by everything.

        The ol' classic cartoons had characters preparing to off themselves. Tom and Jerry, Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote, Bugs Bunny etc.

        No one in my elementary, middle or high school committed suicide, imagine that.

        You don't know that for sure.
        There were about 15-20 deaths in the 12 years of the public schools I attended.
        One thing I know for sure is that we kids were not fully informed on the nature of those deaths.
        FYI, high speed single car accidents in the AMs that are running off a bridge, wrong-way on the interstate, etc is probably a suicide not an accident. But the police are never going to put that into a report unless there's a suicide note.
        And the modern way for young people to off themselves is not car crashes nor self-inflicted gunshot, it's an overdose of a drug the gets written up as "accidental overdose".

        cite needed?
        https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/03/15/591577807/how-many-opioid-overdoses-are-suicides
        https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/news/20180425/many-opioid-overdoses-may-be-suicides#1
        https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/avypkp/how-many-drug-overdoses-are-actually-suicides

        • Re:Easy answer (Score:5, Interesting)

          by lgw ( 121541 ) on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @04:45PM (#58185374) Journal

          Someone mod AC up - the post is informative.

          FYI, high speed single car accidents in the AMs that are running off a bridge, wrong-way on the interstate, etc is probably a suicide not an accident. But the police are never going to put that into a report unless there's a suicide note.
          And the modern way for young people to off themselves is not car crashes nor self-inflicted gunshot, it's an overdose of a drug the gets written up as "accidental overdose".

          FYI, the police are also never going to put "self-inflicted gunshot" into a report unless there's a note. It's "accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun". From the statistics, you'd think cleaning a gun is an intensely dangerous activity.

        • You only prove my point..

          Sure nowadays some kid reads Emo or gets a few bullying social media posts and offs himself. Psychological marshmallows.

      • Answer is Millenials are soft and impressionable

        The youngest Millennials were born in 1996 to 2005, depending on who's definition you want to use.

        You are arguing that late-teen to early-20s at the youngest are using a program designed for 5 to 8 year olds.

        Welcome to being old. The people you derided as children are adults now.

        • Too many of them are kids in adult bodies

          • Funny, that's what your grandparents said about you.

            And their grandparents said about them.

            And Plato's generation's grandparents said about Plato's.

            • There's a passage in the Iliad where one old fart is talking about the real heroes they had back when he was young, not like these modern whippersnappers like Achilles and Diomedes.

  • Can't Promise Curated Content and Not Curate It (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Koreantoast ( 527520 ) on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @03:25PM (#58184848)
    Should be important to note that this is not talking about YouTube in general but specifically a product that the company setup promising carefully curated content for children. If you're going to create a curated set of programs intentionally marketed toward children, they really should be reviewing videos before putting them on the app versus just hoping detection algorithms and self-reporting are going to catch clips spliced in. For this kind of program, once your credibility is shot, you're not going to recover anytime in the near future.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      For this kind of program, once your credibility is shot, you're not going to recover anytime in the near future.

      I know you're referring to youtube's credibility, but a valid point to be raised is the credibility of these "child safety" groups, which is shot just as bad after so many times crying wolf.

      It's getting to ridiculous levels bordering on insanity.

      I don't just mean "back in my day we watched all sorts of things", although that rings true too.
      Warner Brothers legal department a couple years back sent a DMCA take down to youtube reporting Warner Bros own channel for having Looney Toons on it, complaining about a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Altus ( 1034 )

        I don't know man... Pokemon is basically dog fighting with more exotic animals.... and that might not even be the creepiest thing about that show

    • Their problem is the usual failure of the blacklist approach. They let anyone upload anything and then try to detect and blacklist after the fact. That approach is always going to fail as the uploaders have plenty of ways to evade the detection, and the moderators have limited resources. The only effective approach would be whitelisting, as in every video is reviewed *before* it is posted. But that would kill the platform's popularity and profitability.

    • Self-Harm Clips Hidden in Kids' Cartoons

      carefully curated content for children. ... once your credibility is shot,

      ** I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE **

  • Lots of that crap in Hollyweird. It should not be tolerated.

  • Ever notice just how much suicide was in the classic Warner Brothers stuff? I got a lot of it on DVD over the past few years because, hey who doesn't like that stuff, and I started to realize just how many of those clips were trimmed on TV network broadcasts in the modern day. It was just about a cartoon characters first resort in the 40's and 50's. I don't recall seeing much of that in Disney stuff from the same era, or the others, but those were more kid focused while Warner was buffer material for adu

    • Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies > Silly Symphonies

      • Oh, I love Looney Tunes along with Tom and Jerry - the well known one, the other Tom and Jerry sucked a little.

        I've got my kids watching them, but that suicide stuff in Warner Brothers actually upsets my wife a little. I sort of ruined her world when I pointed out just how much of what was in those cartoons was WWII propaganda too.

        What I find interesting, and I blame the day care - I had Looney Tunes on at home because I liked them. My son is a Mickey Fan, to stupid degrees. When he was just old enough t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by acroyear ( 5882 )

      The most annoying of this was in their version of Horton Hatches the Egg, circa '42 I think. In it, as the boat passes through the ocean, a fish pops out, looks at the elephant, goes "Now I've Seen Everything", and suddenly blows his head off with a revolver out of nowhere. I can't *stand* that gag, but the termite terrace era used it quite a few times.

      It is so ridiculously un-Seuss-like, that no wonder it took him 20 years to agree to have another of his stories adapted, and (aside from Friz's Cat in the

  • YouTube has a lot of really great content. About 4% is really great, which is still A LOT of great content. Unfortunately 95% is garbage. And 1% is harmful.

    YouTube can't be trusted and is banned from my house for my kids. Sorry, but kids shouldn't be allowed to watch YouTube. Especially not the Kids YouTube, which is where the real freaks congregate.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      You're just setting them up to get addicted to it once they're free from your control. I've always been allowed to play video games, and when I went to college, it was business as usual. Other people weren't allowed to play at all at home. Guess what they did once they were out of their parents control?

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

          I draw the line at not getting addicted. Trying it in moderation is fine. Kids will be curious and your banning it just makes them even more curious.

          To be brutally honest, you sound like one of those weak-willed defeatists who'll cave to their children's demands because you don't have the spine to draw the line and walk it.

          With all due respect, you make the same argument as those people who promote abstinence. You know, the kind that pretends to be all about chastity, but then turn around and rapes the kids.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

              Where do you draw the line? Can they try cocaine? Heroin? Why not? What about alcohol? Alcohol seems to be one of the most addictive substances around.. How much alcohol damages, or simply mildly stunts, a developing brain?

              Alcohol is an acquired taste and kids hate it. Let them try it. Or better yet, force them to drink PBR as a punishment. They won't be going near that again until well into adulthood.

              I've read study after study that appears to show that social media is addictive.. Dopamine hits.. etc.. Maybe it's not unreasonable to suggest that it be limited to adults.. This is the first generation growing up with it.

              Crime is down, reading proficiency is improving, and the world is more peaceful than ever, all despite stagnant wages and a growing trend of single-parenthood. Guess being stuck to the screen all day keeps them out of trouble. The only people who have a problem with this are the older generations who think they're the best and e

  • Light on content and a product placement (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    There is little indication of how prevalent such content is. Who made the original video? What were their motives?

    The originating blogpost is a thinly veiled product placement for an "internet safety" product.

  • Do not be afraid. Do not get mad. Breathe deep... Relax... Mellow... Ommm... Ommm [youtube.com]

  • Like in 90% of the Youtube videos.

  • Give (Score:3)

    by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @05:35PM (#58185676) Journal

    A "kids" site should be completely curated.

    Sounds like YouTube is trying to have their cake and eat it too.

  • I saw the offending clip. I agree completely that it has no place being where it was, would kiddies who watch that program be old enough or aware enough to understand what the guy was talking about?

    What was the original context of that clip?

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