#Elsagate and the billions of uninformed parents...

The past week has brought a lot of attention to the #Elsagate hashtag and hopefully more people are becoming aware that YouTube and YouTube Kids is not a replacement for child-safe content or good parenting. Investigating YouTube is doing a phenomenal job with regular updates on the more concerning aspects of the issue and some like-minded individuals have been inspired to make videos of their own.

Some of the newer people jumping on board this research are getting a bit overly conspiratorial and jumping to some rather vapid conclusions in their write-ups and videos. Assuming things leads to disinformation and that gets regurgitated by others who don't bother to do their own research. There have been plenty of people who thought the PK ARG was something more substantial than what it turned out to be - an alternative marketing campaign for a band. Perhaps there was some altruism in raising awareness of the topic, but for the most part, it led nowhere but to an album release. Even taking investigating YouTube's work and re-branding it could be troubling, as their speculations of grooming in the first video isn't 100% fact-based despite the rest of their content being a bit more grounded. This creator did a good job of highlighting their content with her own perspective on the matter:

I guess my point is to do your own research and not to rely on others to provide information for you. Be skeptical. If this trend can become as widespread as it has gotten with the low-effort as seen in the live action Spiderman-Elsa videos, who is to say it can't be shilled by the same people or type of people that can take down the narrative.

No matter what, the topic is concerning and requires much more investigating. The progenitors need to be found. The similarities in these videos need to be questioned. Most importantly, this needs to get big. Parents around the world need to know that they can't trust content that's made by some random people on the internet. You would think that's common sense by now, but go to a crowded mall and you'll see that is not the case.