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Weird Kids' Videos and Gaming the Algorithm

Folding Ideas · commentary · Watch on YouTube

Media, journalism & propagandaInternet culture & memesFuturism & technology and society

What it is

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 Hacker News recommends 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.

  • 2 people recommended it
  • 2 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2017, last 2023

What HN commenters said

  1. “A video analysis of the related phenomenon”

    Analysis of auto-generated toddler videos and autoplay manipulation.

    JonnyNova, 2018-04 · Recommendation · in “YouTube is littered with mass-produced videos made by automated bots”

  2. “Bit of a lengthy watch, but this video is pretty eye-opening”

    Eye-opening look at gamed, bizarre kids content on YouTube.

    hbn, 2021-10 · Recommendation · in “YouTube is about to pull its apps from Roku”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: elsagate, youtube algorithm, children's content, autoplay, video essay

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