Elsagate thumbnails featured familiar children's characters doing inappropriate or disturbing things, shown directly or suggested. Examples included injections, mutilation, childbirth, urination, fellatio, and chemical burning.
Elsagate is a controversy surrounding videos on YouTube and YouTube Kids that were categorized as "child-friendly", but contained themes inappropriate for children. These videos often featured fictional characters from family-oriented media, sometimes via crossovers, used without legal permission. The term itself is a combination of Elsa, a character from Disney's Frozen known for frequently appearing in such videos, and "-gate", a suffix for scandals, with the analogy originating from the Watergate scandal. The controversy also included channels that focused on real-life children, such as Toy Freaks, that raised concern about possible child abuse.
Most videos in this category were produced either with live action or Flash animation, but some used claymation or computer-generated imagery.[1] The videos were sometimes tagged in such a way as to circumvent YouTube's child safety algorithms, and some appeared on YouTube Kids. These videos were difficult to moderate due to the large scale of YouTube.[2] In order to capture search results and attract attention from users, their buzzword titles and descriptions featured the names of the fictional characters, as well as keywords such as "education", "learn colors", and "nursery rhymes".[3][4][5] They also included automatically placed commercials, making them lucrative to their owners and YouTube.[3]
Public awareness of the phenomenon grew in late 2017. That year—after reports on child safety on YouTube by several media outlets—YouTube adopted stricter guidelines regarding children's content. In late November, the platform deleted channels and videos falling into the Elsagate category, as well as large amounts of other inappropriate videos or user comments relating to children.[6]
^Popper, Ben (2017-02-20). "Adults dressed as superheroes is YouTube's new, strange, and massively popular genre". The Verge. Retrieved 2024-03-27.
^"Does 'Elsagate' prove YouTube is too big to control?". The Week. 25 November 2017. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
^ abMaheshwari, Sapna (2017-11-04). "On YouTube Kids, Startling Videos Slip Past Filters". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-03-28.
^Bridle, James (2018-06-21). "Something is wrong on the internet". Medium. Archived from the original on 2017-11-23. Retrieved 2024-03-27.
^"Fall of linear TV turns kids towards dark corners of YouTube". Berkeley High Jacket. 2023-01-28. Retrieved 2024-03-28.
^"5 ways we're toughening our approach to protect families on YouTube and YouTube Kids". blog.youtube. Retrieved 2024-03-27.
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