YouTube's toddler app full of disturbing videos, say child advocates who want FTC to investigate

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Consumer groups compiled a disturbing dossier of the YouTube Kids app's content and will ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google's app for unfair and deceptive business practices, the second such complaint filed since the kid-centric video service launched in February.

"The deeper you get into this, the scarier it is in placing children at risk," said Dale Kunkel, a communications professor at the University of Arizona. "I'm astonished at the volume of inappropriate material, much of which will be harmful for kids if they see it." Google said that it works to make the app's videos "as family-friendly as possible" and takes feedback very seriously, removing inappropriate videos flagged by users. In an interview shortly after introducing YouTube Kids, its product manager, Shimrit Ben-Yair, said that the mobile app uses a "two-step process" to select kid-friendly content from the 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube each minute. The first step is to "algorithmically narrow it down to family-friendly content," she said. The second involves Google employees doing a "manual sampling for quality control, to see if it's family-friendly." But that filter is not working, according to advocates and some parents who wrote reviews on the Google Play and iTunes stores documenting how their children discovered violent, sexually explicit or other jaw-dropping content.


YouTube's toddler app full of disturbing videos, say child advocates who want FTC to investigate Children can get all kinds of stuff on YouTube Kids. Like ads for beer and profane cartoons. (WashPost)