Elsagate

[IntrusivePenDesperateSword]

Something is wrong on the internet – James Bridle – Medium

Even though he warns at the beginning of the article, I'll just say it here too. The article in question discusses harsh topics not for the faint of heart, most centrally digital abuse.

This... Phenomenon, appearing on YouTube kids somewhat recently, dubbed Elsagate, shows us one of the most dire consequences of unlimited and unrestricted access to computer generated content and exploitation of YouTube and Google's algorithms. I liked this article specifically because of how it not only pointed out the issue, but also tried to pinpoint a cause, if not a solution. This might be one of our greatest current socio-political problems.

 

[Draugvan]

Got about halfway in. Too long D:

 

[Kitti]

Something is wrong on the internet – James Bridle – Medium

Even though he warns at the beginning of the article, I'll just say it here too. The article in question discusses harsh topics not for the faint of heart, most centrally digital abuse.

This... Phenomenon, appearing on YouTube kids somewhat recently, dubbed Elsagate, shows us one of the most dire consequences of unlimited and unrestricted access to computer generated content and exploitation of YouTube and Google's algorithms. I liked this article specifically because of how it not only pointed out the issue, but also tried to pinpoint a cause, if not a solution. This might be one of our greatest current socio-political problems.

I've seen things about this before maybe half a year ago. It got some action taken toward it around that time, when it hit a spike in interest, but I'm sure it's still out there being concerning. While a lot of people in the comments are dismissing the article for being overly dramatic with the examples shown, at the time when I saw this come to light before, there were much more disturbing examples of this than what the article linked (and the author said as much themselves).

Unfortunately, you get a lot of self-righteous people who talk about how all this is totally ok everyone just needs to supervise their kids better, so that's... helping.

 

[Lusterine]

I saw something about videos dealing with horse care/grooming/etc had thumbnails of bestiality.

I could only imagine a child wanting to watch an innocent horse videos getting an eyeful of nastiness. Somehow YouTube's algorithms were promoting these videos. Unfortunately, although they can flag video content early on, they can't flag thumbnails the same way

 

[Blind Hemingway]

the finger puppets are staring into your soul. forever staring.