All the talk of identity verification got me thinking about what I’ll actually worry about my kids accessing. Perhaps I’m odd, but sex is normal and porn is just exaggerated sex so I feel like I can make it clear it’s as realistic as Lord of the Rings.
What worries me is the brainrot from getting stuck in a media bubble. We are so incredibly vulnerable to being swayed by both propaganda and fringe thinking these days and it’s only easier to create echo chambers with all the AI content flooding the web now.
What do you think is the most dangerous part of the net for those ignorant of the threats?
YouTube
I have two kids and I won’t allow them to watch YouTube until they’re teens or if I watch the vids with them.
Between ElsaGate, disinformation, sexism, and just disgusting ads that play on there…and then there’s YouTube Shorts for brainrot…you can’t just blindly allow them access. Even the “kids” version of YouTube is fucking terrible.
I download Ms Rachel’s videos and play those from my Plex server for them if I need a break or have chores/dinner to do and need a hour to distract them. No ads or auto play videos or anything else.
For your teens, best you can do is make sure they use an ad blocker if possible and teach them how to vet info. I hear people at work say the stupidest “alpha male” sound bites and a simple Google search proves shit wrong 99% of the time, yet these idiots gobble it up.
My son is obsessed with Lego videos. There are a few good channels on YouTube. I only let him watch when I’m in the room with him because it gets shady real quick.
There’s lots of good content on YouTube but it’s best curated and served offline. Jellyfin FTW
Restrict the channels to be the good ones (3b1b, kurzgesagt, the gray cuber, lines that connect, twoswap etc) and put an adblocker on there and it just becomes an amazing resource for passive teaching
Crash Course, Vlogbrothers, Tim Traveller, Robwords.
xkcd, two minutes physics, sebastian lague, peza’s work, CPG grey, branch education, …
I’m pretty much in a progressive bubble on YouTube, but I had a look at the “hyped” list yesterday and it’s all right wing extremist bullshit.