THE VIDEO SHELF · youtube kids content exploitation
Weird Kids' Videos and Gaming the Algorithm
Folding Ideas examines weird, algorithm-gamed children's content on YouTube, from automated toddler videos and educational spam to exploitative prank channels. It looks at how autoplay and recommendation systems reward this material.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN people cite it as an eye-opening summary of Elsagate and the manipulation of YouTube's algorithm in threads about bot-made and kids' content.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Folding Ideas
- Topic
- youtube kids content exploitation
- Format
- commentary
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 5
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2017–2023
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
A video analysis of the related phenomenon: "Weird Kids' Videos and Gaming the Algorithm" [VIDEO] It talks about possibly using machine learning to create many videos targeted at toddlers and using techniques to ensure the next autoplay item doesn't change to another channel.
JonnyNova on Hacker News · 2018-04
In YouTube is littered with mass-produced videos made by automated botsIt's pretty reasonable, and smart I'd say. The kids content on YouTube has been heavily gamed by content farms optimizing content for SEO, making absolutely bizarre and sometimes disgusting content. Bit of a lengthy watch, but this video is pretty eye-opening: [VIDEO] (It's a few …
hbn on Hacker News · 2021-10
In YouTube is about to pull its apps from Roku
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.