this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2025
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youtube? the place with free quality documentaries, free knowledge in the easiest to digest video form about a huge variety of topics? the spot where you can learn life skills, cooking, hobbies, maths, physics, programming, among many others, with visualised tutorials showing every part of every step with explenations?
what on earth is happening to the internet these days? absolute insanity
social media is shit and i get restricting twitter or tiktok, but youtube? it seems so bizarre to me
While all of that might be true, YouTube is also a for-profit cesspool of trash content, hate speech, and misinformation. An entire generation of gen z manosphere Nazi bootlickers got where they are watching "gaming videos" on YouTube.
It auto plays by default and their algorithms are dogshit, so you might start watching an educational video with your kid, but end up on a flat earth video fifteen minutes later, or much much worse.
When my son was younger, we severely limited his YouTube time and closely monitored what he was watching on it. Most parents don't do that.
I dislike legislation like this too, but we're not talking about PBS or a library here. Kids truly shouldn't be on YouTube unattended.
Parenting should stay with parents. The more power the government gets, the more they will abuse it. When companies are restricted, they will see this as an opportunity to better identify adults better.
The expression "it takes a village to raise a child" applies here. It's impossible for a parent to be with their child at all times. Children aren't always at home, and a lot of parents suck, don't care, or are just misinformed. YouTube is available everywhere, including at schools and libraries. Look at it like smoking. We recognize that cigarettes are dangerous and cause cancer, therefore children can't buy them. Social media companies - and let's stop pretending YouTube isn't social media, it very much is - are today's big tobacco. They need regulated, and not doing so is causing tremendous societal harm.
I understand parents can't be around their children 24/7. Companies and organizations have a lot of products already to restrict and limit internet access. Schools and libraries should use these tools as they or as their community sees fit.
If you want to compare it to tobacco products, the main difference is to identify as an adult all you need is an ID. One person at the cashier sees it and it's done. Online activity is more personal. It allows companies and social media to be even more toxic to adults by being able to identify adults better.
Also kids, no matter how restricted it is, will smoke if they wanted to. The same will happen with these social media restrictions excepts that adults will suffer. This will be only the beginning. More and more restrictions will come from this. That's just how governments work.
Red flags should go up automatically with these "save the children" laws.
What's the deal with gaming videos? Do game streamers tend to be Nazis? Seems like a strange place to push right-wing propaganda.
Look up gamergate and Steve Bannon. The gamer to Nazi pipeline is, unfortunately, very real.
Gamers are easy to rile up, already have exposure to a lot of counter culture language in VC, and generally young or ignorant enough that they can't see the obvious propaganda they're being fed. Add into that content creators that intermix rightwing talking points and you can slowly poison their minds into becoming Nazi shitbags.
As the other commenter mentioned, gamergate is where all this shit first came up, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't there with the people who fell for the poison. I was just aware enough of what I was seeing to pull away from that culture before it really poisoned my mind.
I think there's not much Nazi gamer shit out there because it's incredibly rare for any to slip into my recommendations.
But if I let YouTube go it would probably take me from normal people like anyaustin to hype people like xQc. And then from there all the popular people can show up, including asmonmold. And people like him are legit brain rot.
Edit: for overwhelming Nazi content in your feed, try gun YouTubers. I binged gun Jesus and nothing. Watched Brandon Herrera (spelling?) build aks and look at cursed weapon memes and somehow that means I'm a flaming Trumper.
Iv watched tarkov stuff, Brandon Herrera and gun Jesus never seen anything close to Nazi stuff in my recommended. Hell most of my feed is a ping pong of gun stuff, femboys and trans creators.
I watched ONE freeze drier video and it took a month to get YouTube to stop giving me Nazi pepper paranoia videos.
I should have headed the warning of the good Midwestern man known as technology connections. ):