Elsagate is a neologism that refers to the controversy surrounding child-friendly videos on YouTube and YouTube Kids that contain inappropriate themes for children. Most of the videos under this classification are notorious for presenting content such as violence, sexual situations, fetish, drugs, alcohol, toilet humor, and dangerous or annoying situations and activities.
Videos often feature popular characters from family-oriented media, sometimes through crossovers, used without legal permission; the term itself is portmanteau Elsa (the character of the Disney animated movie 2013 Frozen , which is often depicted in such videos) and -the gateway (the ending for scandal). However, the Elsagate controversy also includes channels like Toy Freaks that do not feature characters suitable for children/families but real children, and have raised concerns about possible child abuse.
Most of the videos in this category are direct action movies or raw digital animations, although some channels have used more complicated techniques like clay animation. Despite YouTube's age-restricting policies, this video is sometimes tagged in order to trick the child security algorithms that are installed, even into YouTube Kids, and thus difficult to moderate due to the large platform scale. To capture search results and attract the attention of users, their titles and descriptions display the names of famous characters, as well as keywords like "education", "color learning", "children's songs", etc. They also include ads that are placed automatically, making them profitable for their owners and to YouTube. Apart from the unpleasant and often confusing nature of these videos, many are attracting millions of views.
While criticism of the channel itself has existed since at least 2016, public awareness about the phenomenon grew in 2017, as it becomes part of the wider controversy about child safety on YouTube. That year, after several media reports about it, YouTube adopted a rigorous guide on children's content. At the end of November, the company began removing channels and bulk videos that fall into the category of Elsagate , as well as a large number of other inappropriate videos or user comments relating to children.
Video Elsagate
Histori
Sejarah awal
The channel's Elsagate has been around since at least 2014. As of June 2016, The Guardian publishes articles about the Web and Tiara channels , which were created in March in the same year. Seems to be based in Canada, Web and Tiaras has been the most viewed YouTube channel for two months with about 1.7 billion views. This channel shows people dressed up like characters like Spider-Man, Elsa, and Joker are involved in strange and unreasonable actions: the video has background music but no dialogue. It was also reported that some almost identical channels, named Toys Monster, The Superheroes Life and The Kids Club have appeared on YouTube.
In January 2017, one channel under the control of a YouTube partner in Vietnam, Spiderman Frozen Marvel Superhero Real Life , blocked their Vietnamese customers after complaints from parents regarding their video content. The owner of the channel was later fined by the Vietnamese authorities.
The high number of views has caused some people to voice concerns that the channel is playing a system by using bots or click farms to inflate images with higher proportions; However, there is no evidence for this.
In February 2017, The Verge commented that "adults dressed up in costumes and playing odd and wordless plays has become a fast growing industry on the world's largest video platform" and that while many videos "not useful but benign." ", others feature more questionable content such as scattered humor, and violent or sexual situations.The article notes that most videos are made on very limited budgets and" some Halloween costumes ", which make them easy to produce and contribute to their multiplication This also attributes their success to the frequent use of "Freudian worries" that children may find interesting, funny or scary, such as "urinate, defecate, kiss, pregnancy, and scary ideas go to the doctor and get an injection".
Also in February, The Awl publishes articles on Web and Tiaras and similar channels, describing their content as an "unreasonable nightmare" with titles like "Frozen Elsa got FOOTWEAR!", "Frozen Elsa gets BRAIN BELLY "," Frozen Elsa & Anna TEAR SPIDERMAN APART! "," EVIL SANTA KIDNAPS Frozen Elsa & Spiderman! "Or" Frozen Elsa FLUSHES Spiderman in Toilet! ". The website commented that the video was "quite twisted for children's content: some videos involving Elsa giving birth, and in some others, Spiderman injects Elsa with brightly colored fluids, you half expect the scenario to be a porn arrangement." In most videos, likes and dislikes are disabled, so it's impossible to know how many users are actually involved with them. Many videos display hundreds of comments in a nonsense, some written by similar channels in a real effort to attract more clicks.
In March, the BBC posted an article entitled "An annoying YouTube video that tricked kids". This article focuses on imita imitation peppa pigs where the teeth of a titular character are pulled painfully by a dentist, and a video featuring characters burning the occupied house. The article also mentions the existence of "hundreds" of similar videos, ranging from illegal, but harmless, copyrighted cartoons to scary and dreadful content.
CTV News also reported in March about YouTube's "fake toys problem", with adult-themed imitations of popular children's shows that often appear on YouTube Kids: "In some cases, the video will feature child-friendly thumbnails, while the video itself may very different "and not very suitable for small children. The network commented that such a video "is often a nightmare to behold, with lots of crying and frightening scenes involving monsters and blood.Many of these videos roam into dark territory, with characters that are often chased, attacked or injured in a bloody way."
The term Elsagate was created on the Internet in 2017. During the summer of that year, it became a popular tagar on Twitter because users were paying attention to the presence of such material on YouTube and YouTube Kids. In Reddit, the community Elsagate was created on June 23 to discuss the phenomenon, immediately attracting tens of thousands of users.
November 2017
In November 2017, several newspapers published an article about the YouTube channel Toy Freaks, which had been made two years earlier by a single father named Greg Chism. Based in Illinois, according to Daily Mail , Toy Freaks has a total of 8.53 million subscribers and is among the top 100 most viewed, before closing that month. These channels often feature Chais's daughters and in many cases display their fears and crying.
These videos can also be found on local video platforms in China, where YouTube is blocked, including Tencent, Youku and iQiyi. Tencent has formed a special team to monitor its video platform, and permanently closes 121 accounts and blocked more than 4,000 search keywords in January 2018. The China Public Security Ministry suggested that Internet users should report these videos once found.
Some celebrities, including rapper B.o.B and comedian Joe Rogan, bring awareness of the issue.
On November 4, 2017, The New York Times published an article about a "shocking" video that slipped through a YouTube filter and annoys children, "either through mistakes or because malicious actors have figured out how to trick YouTube Kids -anak algorithm ". On November 6, author James Bridle publishes in a Medium a piece titled Something's wrong on the internet , where he commented on "thousands and thousands of videos": "Someone or something or some combination of people and things use YouTube to systematically scare, traumatize, and abuse children, automatically and on a large scale. " Bridle also observed that the confusing content of many videos appears to result from the constant "overlaying and intermixing" of popular figures, characters and keywords. As a result, even actual human videos begin to resemble automatic content, while "clear parody and even shadier knock-offs" interact with "legions of algorithmic content producers" until it becomes "absolutely impossible to know what is going on". On November 17, Internet commentator Philip DeFranco posted a video covering "the crazy YouTube Kids problem".
The New York Times found that one of the channels featuring fake cartoons, Super Zeus TV , is linked to a website called SuperKidsShop.com, registered in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. A man who works for SuperKidsShop.com confirms that his partners are responsible for the video, where "a team of about 100 people" works. Subsequent requests for interviews were not answered.
On November 9, members of the Negativland satirical collage group presenting an episode of their weekly radio show Over the Edge dedicated to Elsagate . "Animal Kids Kids" "threads Elsagate through remixes of three episodes of the Over-Edge Over the Edge media for children, all broadcasted in the last years before Teletubbies pioneered marketing into demographics aged 6 to 18 months. "
On November 23, the French-Canadian outlet TabloÃÆ'¯d released a video investigation of Toy Monster, a channel connected to the Web and Tiara. They confronted the video creators - based on the southern coast of Quebec City - who refused to be interviewed. One of the actors shown in the video anonymously stated that he was required to refrain from commenting. The investigation revealed that identical content is being posted on various channels that appear to be operated by the same person.
On November 28th, Forbes presented Elsagate as an example of the "dark stomach of the digital age". The author of the article commented that the "giant scale" problem seems to indicate that children's content on YouTube has become a "monster beyond our control" and that "it's scary to imagine how many toddlers have been affected" by Elsagate , "in a way beyond our comprehension".
Maps Elsagate
Effects on children
While the behavioral effects of this video are currently not in scientific research, many parents and colleagues have posted anecdotal reports in subreddit/r/Elsagate, discussing unusual behavior in children after watching videos from the channel associated with the scandal, and possibly correlation with pedophilia.
The New York Times quoted pediatric professor Michael Rich, who asserted that these videos are potentially dangerous to children who can find them even more irritating because "characters they think they know and trust" are shown behaving inappropriate. or violent means.
Response from YouTube
In August 2017, YouTube announced new guidelines on content and monetization. In a series of ongoing efforts to remove controversial and offensive videos, it was announced that creators are no longer able to monetize videos that "make inappropriate use of family-friendly characters." In November of the same year, it announced that it would implement "a new policy that limits the age of this content in the main YouTube app when flagged".
Controversy extends to channels that display unnecessary characters of children but actual children, who sometimes commit inappropriate or dangerous activities under adult guidance. As part of a wider action, YouTube deleted the Freaks Toy channel, featuring a father (Greg Chism) and two daughters in potentially offensive situations. Chism is currently under investigation by child protection officials in Illinois and Missouri over alleged child abuse. Prior to its removal, the channel had more than 8.5 million subscribers.
It was also revealed in the media that many videos featuring minors - often uploaded by the children themselves and showing innocent content - have attracted comments from pedophiles. Some of these videos are monetized. As a result of the controversy, some large advertisers have frozen spending on YouTube.
On November 22, 2017, YouTube announced that it had deleted more than 50 channels and thousands of videos that did not comply with the new guidelines. On November 27, the company said in a statement to BuzzFeed News that it had "suspended more than 270 accounts and removed more than 150,000 videos", "turning off comments on more than 625,000 videos targeted by child predators" and "removing ads from nearly 2 million videos and over 50,000 channels disguised as family-friendly content ". Forbes has commented that many problematic videos can still be seen on the platform and that "the video volume hastily removed from the site proves that the YouTube algorithm is simply not effective in protecting small children."
Motives
The motive behind these videos is unknown, although The Verge indicates that the content may be of interest to the children. Because many videos have millions of views and include ads, The New York Times suggests the videos are financially profitable.
Elsagate is also the subject of conspiracy theories that suggest the video is trying to normalize pedophilia or sexual abuse of minors. Some also suggest videos that may be related to brainwashing and nonsense replies beneath the video are coded messages.
See also
- Film Film Ratings System Sites
- Surprises
- YouTube Ã,§ Child protection
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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