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Tips for committing suicide are appearing in children’s cartoons on YouTube and the YouTube Kids app.
The sinister content was first flagged by doctors on the pediatrician-run parenting blog pedimom.comand later reported by the Washington Post. An anonymous “physician mother” initially spotted the content while watching cartoons with her son on YouTube Kids as a distraction while he had a nosebleed. Four minutes and forty-five seconds into a video, the cartoon cut away to a clip of a man walking onto the screen and simulating cutting his wrist. “Remember, kids, sideways for attention, longways for results,” he says and then walks off screen. The video then quickly flips back to the cartoon.
Suicide tips stashed in otherwise benign cartoons are just the latest ghastly twist in the corruption of kids’ content on YouTube and YouTube Kids. For years, the video-sharing company has struggled with a whack-a-mole-style effort to keep a potpourri of disturbing and potentially scarring content out of videos targeting children. Videos have been found with adult content ranging from foul-language to depictions of mass shootings, alcohol use, fetishes, human trafficking stories, and sexual situations. Many contain—and attract clicks with—popular cartoon characters, such as Elsa from the 2013 animated Disney film Frozen.
Man giving kids wrist-slitting tips in the middle of a cartoon found on YouTube.
originally posted by: blueman12
Don't let your kid watch YouTube then... I know YouTube needs to fix this, but it's not like young kids NEED YouTube...