Elsagate

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Elsagate refers to a type of incident where malicious content creators are left unrestrained to publish illicit content that is targeted towards minors. Residing among video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, millions of minors have been left affected by the negligence of the companies that maintain them.

Background

Elsagate content is associated with mature content that is covered by a thin façade of what audiences would initially expect to be child-friendly content. The content itself takes advantage of a multitude of mediums, such as flash-style animation, stop-motion or claymation, live action footage, or most recently, AI generation. Most videos uploaded would take advantage of methods to take advantage of the algorithm with junk keywords and buzzwords in the titles like "education" or "nursery rhymes", and the attention of children or unaware parents with bright thumbnails and recognizable characters.

Version 1 - (2016-2017)

The initial introduction of Elsagate content started at an unknown date, however its presence was mostly discovered by outlets such as The Guardian in 2016, where the content was rather tame with no dialogue, only taking advantage of characters owned by large companies that would be popular among children, such as Spider-Man or Elsa. The following year, the content eventually became far more questionable, such as sexual behaviors and scatological humor.

By early 2017, the amount of channels publishing this content skyrocketed, and reports on the content were matching similar amounts of proliferation. Publications such as the BBC, CTV News, and Yahoo! Lifestyle were among many covering this, and additionally the community 'r/ElsaGate' on Reddit formed, focusing on documenting the excessive publishing of this content.

Google's response

Initial response from Google's moderation teams were limited, only a few videos were demonetized or taken down. When users on the platform were covering the incident, rather than the moderators taking down offending channels, YouTubers faced punishment for reporting instead. Only after facing mass coverage from major news outlets on the mature depictions of child-favorite characters, potential investigations from the FBI, and threats from advertisers pulling funding, did YouTube put forth measures to effectively stop the spread of this content.

Features have included the following:

• Disabling comments on videos marked 'for kids'
• Disabling "targeted" advertising on marked videos
• Loss of monetization for some marked videos

Version 2 - 'Aphmaugate' (2020-Now)

In the start of the 2020s, the content resurfaced in the feeds of users, especially as the height of 'lockdown' encouraged an increase in screen time among all demographics. Compared to the previous iteration, the content would instead infringe on smaller indie intellectual properties and game franchises. The content was considerably more violent and mature in nature, such as murder, abuse, and drugs.

This period had also shown content created intended explicitly for mature audiences being automatically marked for kids against the wishes of the creator, which harms the monetization of their content and contributes to the harm of children.

Version 3 - 'AIgate' (2023-Now)

This section is incomplete. This notice can be deleted once all the placeholder text has been replaced.

An offshoot of the previous version emerged with the growth of generative AI, as content could be generated at a considerably high pace compared to previous incidents. This content continued the trend of disguising mature content with characters that would seem kid-friendly.

Consumer response

The initial response from the public of the first version of the incident was excessively negative, with users agreeing to refuse to use YouTube kids due to a lack of adequate parental controls for the content that would be shown to the user.^{[citation needed]} Version 3 has especially brought significant backlash due to the explicit nature of the videos being published and being shown to children using the platform.^{[citation needed]}