"Someone or something or some combination of people and things is using YouTube to systematically frighten, traumatise, and abuse children, automatically and at scale, and it forces me to question my own beliefs about the internet, at every level."
Read the rest of the article:
https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2
Then come back and read my take.
There's much "pearl clutching" here, as pointed out in the post's comments.
Kids watch scary, creepy stuff all the time. This was also pointed out in the comments.
I'm not sure it hurts them. The videos included by the author are definitely "off," as he says they are.
And he says there's much worse out there, and I can believe that.
But the fact that kids are seeing these videos doesn't freak me out.
The spooky thing, to me, relates to the consequences of automation and machine-generated content.
Cute, colorful videos getting spun into creepy, scary videos isn't the "worst that could happen."
It's pretty benign.
But what might the worst be? That kind of scares me.
Everyone's trying to automate, to do more with machines. Many of these people have very little ethical sensibility. Their only sensibility is to maximize profits at the expense of everything else.
The "everything else" here includes meaning, connection.
This is a benign example.
How much worse could it get?
The machines shouldn't be making kid's videos.
They probably shouldn't be allowed to make lists of us, either.