I don’t really understand your point here. I have to micromanage my kid’s media consumption because on YouTube it’s Google’s algorithm and my kid is not their customer.
Comment on “Educational” AI YouTube videos accused of teaching kids to play in traffic & eat toxic food
Hacksaw@lemmy.ca 3 weeks agoI hear this a lot, but you have to put it in context. It used to be you could let your kids play outside in a nice neighbourhood. Your job as a parent was to make sure they went to play in a nice neighbourhood and at the houses of decent people. You could easily keep them away from bad places physically because they were separate places. Your neighbours would also tell you if they saw your kid in a bad place or being up to no good.
The Internet destroys that concept. The good and the bad are one link away, you need constant vigilance and you have almost no help. It’s not healthy to micromanage your children’s media consumption. It’s like helicopter parents who never let their kids free. Setting this as the expectation isn’t healthy.
I mean we don’t really have a choice, but acting like it’s okay for YouTube to lure my young kids into red pill content, or weird AI nonsense is pretty weird. Why are we just accepting this reality, should we not have some control over our algorithms. It’s basically what our neighbourhood used to be. Why are we saying it’s okay for YouTube to lure kids into dangerous content, and that is every parent’s job to constantly micromanage their kids media consumption as if that’s healthy parenting? It’s SURVIVAL parenting, not healthy parenting!
We should be able to control our algorithms and help our kids control their algorithms because the solution isn’t constant fear and vigilance lest we get taken by the billionaire class and their dangerous ideology.
It’s not normal that we created a space so fundamentally unsafe for kids. Very few physical spaces are like this in real life and I think you should try to imagine what would happen if a kid walked into a “non-kid” space like a sex shop or whatever. Because it’s not let the kid have unlimited access to porn and kink while we blame the parents. It’s usually a human worker working with the kid to get back to safety (usually their parents).
harmbugler@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Hacksaw@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Constant parental supervision is bad for kids and bad for childhood. But somehow we’ve created an Internet so hostile to children that we actually EXPECT 100% parental supervision. We act like it’s normal to expect parents to “always watch what their kids are doing online” as if 100% supervision was ever part of good parenting. We deserve a better internet, not more parental supervision. We should be able to control our algorithms and help our children manage theirs, not have our children’s attention spans monetized and diverted by the billionaire class. People tend to blame parents when it’s corporations who created this insanely hostile space which damages us and our children.
harmbugler@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Indeed, it is aggressively hostile. I thought setting up an allowlist of subscribed channels would be a simple ask. That plus an adblocker and job done, right? No, Google’s algorithm is what you get–despite your subscriptions you will get plenty of other things and they will push your kid towards some inappropriate things.
What I do instead is block YouTube on my kid’s devices and download selected videos to host on Jellyfin. It’s a bit of a pain and not legal, but much better than trying to monitor YouTube use.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The point is paranoia and fear that the ‘bad people’ will hurt your kids.
Same stupid crap that you can’t let your kids play on your lawn because there are always pedos in white vans patrolling trying to kidnap your kids.
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
a kid wanting into a sex shop isn’t going to be warped and traumatized for life. jesus.
you are looking for demons where they are none. Not to mention ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ people is going to be loaded with racism and classism. My parents thought the ‘bad kids’ were the ones who were black and brown, but had no issue with me hanging out with the white kdis who were doing vandalism and ended up with arrest records…
Hacksaw@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I never said a sex shop was going to be bad, I mostly said the opposite. I used it as an example that when a child walks into a physical space meant for adults, the community helps. When a child walks into a digital space meant for adults it’s expected their parent was watching at all times and failed.
I also completely agree with your assessment of good and bad places/neighborhoods being often used as a cover for classism and racism.
That being said there are places near here I would not let young kids play unsupervised because of the crime rate, homelessness and open drug use. There are places near here I do let kids of an appropriate age okay unsupervised because they are nice safe parks and areas even if they’re poor neighborhoods. In fact some of these I feel are safer because there are more kids playing and parents aren’t shy to tell other kids off when they misbehave like they are in “rich” neighbourhoods.
Same with people’s houses. Obviously looking for “shared values” can be a cover for racism, but I’m not a cis-white-straight-nt-male looking for a socio-normative house. I’m not looking for them to be white and rich, I’m looking for parents who care about their kids without being too helicopter-y.
GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
I agree, but with all the brand recognition, corporate TOS, rules, “kids” section, design, beeping off swear words and restrictions on YouTube it gives most parents the appearance to be a save place.