Elsagate

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 - Present)

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.

The indie mascot horror scene has particularly faced the theft of their IP for the purposes of content farming for kids, even causing the creator of Sprunki, an indie version of Incredibox, to quit their project partially due to the abuse of their IP inside content farms:

I have a secret that I have been keeping for a while. But after getting hacked, I noticed it's a bit too late. But lemme say this anyway

Sprunki 2 has already been cancelled this whole time.

The situation was already bad enough, such as messed up content farms, overpopularity, and what the idiots called "sprunki ripoff". I just haven't told you yet because of the STUPIDEST reason so lemme just ruin the surprise

It's because of a planned APRIL FOOLS sprunki 2.

It was supposed to be a whole ass meme game. But at some point in game, you get a video about the cancellation of sprunki. I haven't tell you that I cancelled it yet because it would ruin the fun (kinda stupid i know)

At this point, I'm gonna cancel the sprunki update. I'll release the cancelled version when I want to.

This is a good thing for me because I can finally focus on something I actually enjoy making.

I'll make a video about this later

But for now, spread the words

1. sprunkiisdead

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 - Present)

An offshoot of the previous version emerged with the growth of generative AI, and compared to the speed of human output, AI generated videos proliferated excessively on video platforms. Initially this content was a series of poorly stitched-together static images, however as access to AI-powered video generators increased and the costs to use these additionally became cheaper, consumers on several video platforms were faced with a flood of AI generated videos that exhibited disturbing imagery and elements suitable only for mature audiences, while maintaining the façade of looking like it is content for kids.

A highlight of these channels are centered around the tag "Cute Cat", which has notably been discussed by creators and outlets alike. The AI generated cat videos show disturbing imagery involving humanoid cats, often depicted as a child, either committing or facing disturbing acts like abuse, physical trauma, torture, and more.

Some of these channels will label that the content is not intended for children, however, they neglect to leave these content warnings outside of the comment section. Due to the mixture of paranoia from previous Elsagate-type incidents and a difficult to control kids app, parents have lost trust in YouTube Kids, meaning they are at risk of accidentally showing this traumatizing content to their own children.

Despite the excess in disturbing content, both YouTube and its parent company Google have neglected to stop the proliferation of this content on its platform.

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. 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.