Momo was a hoax, and other stuff you already know
Momo’s Suicide Challenge started as a hoax in another country and spread like wildfire here when a Twitter account published a video showing someone playing a video of Momo encouraging their kids to kill themselves.
Since then it’s been seen by some guy your kid knows who can’t provide a link because it’s in YouTube kids (tap library, tap history, find link, share it)
Since then it’s been seen by some guy your kid knows who can’t provide a link because the YouTube Kids app was deleted by the parents – ah, good one kid. Your parents can’t install YouTube Kids on another device, log into your profile, swipe right into the Watch It Again territory, and see your watch history… oh wait.
Since then it’s been seen by some guy your kid know who can’t provide a link because his parents were disgusted with Google and deleted their accounts so… oh wait, you can recover and download history?
But wait, there’s a Momo on there I’ve seen it… yup, people started making Momo videos and uploading them after parents spread the hoax like wildfire. There exist momo videos in other languages in which people are warning of the hey where’s the link?
NY Mag had a great headline: How Are Kids Supposed to Learn to Be Smart Online If Adults Are Such Big Dummies?
So far the only YouTube link that shows Momo before last week (in English,) and the invention of the “suicide challenge” is this one. (not embedding, preview’s creeperific). The hoax has been in other countries before.
Police, schools, and family groups are falling for the hoax pretty much guaranteeing a crappy movie based on the suicide challenge / Momo is already in the works.
That said, there are extremely valid reasons to talk to your kids about YouTube Kids, YouTube, and anything that exposes them to predators. Just because Momo’s fake doesn’t mean they’re not going to run into something idiotic like this in the future.
Pedophiles and YouTube are a big problem these days. YouTube is a big problem these days pushing pirated content pretty much 24/7 somewhere on their YT Kids platform (why yes, I’m completely sure Trolls is free on YouTube Kids… oh wait, that is trolls… it’s just chopped up flipped reversed and out of sequence wtf)
But parents are the problem here, parents, well meaning schools, well meaning police departments who got calls from well meaning people who cried wolf, while meaning well and not demanding proof. Like the Tide Pod challenge that was a joke and people freaked and it became a real thing.
Or not, it’s real, post a link to the video and not a link to someone playing a video that looks like it’s on YouTube.
