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The Audio Long Read

Unboxing, bad baby and evil Santa: how YouTube got swamped with creepy content for kids

The Audio Long Read

The Guardian

Society & Culture

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When children first started flocking to YouTube, some seriously strange stuff started to appear – and after much outcry, the company found itself scrambling to fix the problem. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is The Guardian.

0:30.0

Who is Watch and Story's Next Wanted with CREAPY CONTENT for Kids.

0:41.3

Harry Joe worked out of a tenth story Wall Street office

0:44.8

in which one corner was stacked with treadmill desks

0:47.7

and another was filled with racks of colorful costumes

0:50.8

and a green screen for filming nursery rhymes.

0:57.4

He worked as a securities lawyer

0:59.0

With his wife, Sona, Joe also ran Mother Goose Club, a YouTube media empire.

1:06.0

Sona had produced short children's segments for public access TV stations before the couple

1:10.2

decided to branch out on their own. As educators, the Joe's once taught English in Korea.

1:16.0

They saw televisions pedagogical flaws. To learn words, kids should see lips move,

1:21.6

but Barney's mouth never did. Baby Einstein mostly showed toys. The Joe's, who were Korean

1:27.7

American, had two young children, and noticed how few faces on kids TV looked like theirs.

1:34.1

So they started Mother Goose Club.

1:39.7

Investing in a studio and hiring a diverse set of actors to dawn animal costumes,

1:44.8

and sink itsy-bitsy spider and hickory dickery dog.

1:48.9

It was like teletubbies, only less trippy in an A.

1:51.4

The Joe's planned to sell DVDs to parents, gining up interest for a possible TV show.

2:01.3

YouTube offered a convenient place to store clips, and in 2008, Joe started an account there,

2:06.8

not thinking much of it. Two years in, he started checking the accounts numbers after leaving work.

2:13.3

1000 views. He checked the next day. 10,000. He couldn't find many other videos for kids on YouTube.

2:19.9

Maybe instead of television, he thought, we can be the first to do this.

...

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