Elsagate

Elsagate is a neologism referring to the controversy surrounding videos on YouTube and YouTube Kids that are categorized as "child-friendly", but which contain themes that are inappropriate for children. Most videos under this classification are notable for presenting inappropriate content; those include graphic violence, sexual situations, fetishes, obscene language, drugs, alcohol, injections, disease, explicit toilet humor and dangerous or upsetting situations and activities.

These videos often feature popular characters from family-oriented media, sometimes via crossovers, used without legal permission. The term itself is composed of " Elsa", a character from Disney's '' Frozen'', known for frequently appearing in such videos, and (a suffix for scandals). However, the Elsagate controversy has also included channels such as Toy Freaks that feature real children instead of child/family-friendly characters, raising concern about possible child abuse.

Most videos in this category are either live action or crude animation—although a few channels have been using more elaborate techniques such as clay animation or computer-generated imagery.Ben Popper
Adults dressed as superheroes is YouTube’s new, strange, and massively popular genre
, ''The Verge'', 4 February 2017. Despite YouTube's age restriction policies, these videos are sometimes tagged in such a way as to circumvent the inbuilt child safety algorithms, even making their way into YouTube Kids, and are thus difficult to moderate due to the large scale of the platform. In order to capture search results and attract attention from users, their titles and descriptions feature names of famous characters, as well as keywords like "education", "learn colors", "nursery rhymes", etc.Sapna Maheshwari
On YouTube Kids, Startling Videos Slip Past Filters
, ''The New York Times'', 4 November 2017.James Bridle
Something is wrong on the internet
, Medium, 6 November 2017. They also include automatically placed ads, making them lucrative to their owners and YouTube. Despite the objectionable and often confusing nature of these videos, many attract millions of views.

Public awareness of the phenomenon grew in late 2017, as mainstream media started to report about child safety on YouTube. That year—after reports by several media outlets—YouTube adopted stricter guidelines regarding children's content. In late November, the company started to mass-delete channels and videos falling into the Elsagate category, as well as large amounts of other inappropriate videos or user's comments relating to children.Johanna Wright
5 ways we’re toughening our approach to protect families on YouTube and YouTube Kids
, ''Official YouTube Blog'', 22 November 2017.

History

Early history (2016–2017)

In June 2016, ''The Guardian'' published an article about the channel Webs and Tiaras, which had been created in March of the same year. The channel showed people dressed as characters like Spider-Man, Elsa, and the Joker engaging in bizarre or nonsensical actions. The videos themselves had background music but no dialogue. Having no script, there was no language barrier on the videos which would normally hinder worldwide distribution. The article also reported that several nearly identical channels named Toy Monster, The Superheroes Life, and The Kids Club had appeared on YouTube.YouTube's latest hit: neon superheroes, giant ducks and plenty of lycra
, ''The Guardian'', 29 June 2016.

In January 2017, one channel under the control of a YouTube partner in Vietnam, Spiderman Frozen Marvel Superhero Real Life, blocked their Vietnamese subscribers after complaints from parents regarding the content of their videos. The channel's owner was later fined by Vietnamese authorities.

The high number of views have led some to voice concerns that such channels are gaming the system by using bots or click farms to inflate viewing figures to higher proportions; however, there is no evidence for this.

In February 2017, ''The Verge'' commented that "adults dressing up in costume and acting out weird, wordless skits has become a booming industry on the world's biggest video platform" and that while many videos were "puerile but benign", others featured more questionable content such as scatological humor and violent or sexual situations. The article noted that most videos were made with a very limited budget and "a few Halloween costumes", which made them easy to produce and contributed to their multiplication. It also attributed their success to the frequent use of "Freudian concerns", which young children may find fascinating, amusing, or frightening, such as " peeing, pooping, kissing, pregnancy, and the terrifying notion of going to the doctor and getting a shot".

Also in February, The Awl published an article on Webs and Tiaras and similar channels, describing their content as "nonsensically nightmarish" with titles like "Frozen Elsa gets CHICKEN FEET!", "Frozen Elsa gets BRAIN BELLY!", "Frozen Elsa & Anna TEAR SPIDERMAN APART!", "EVIL SANTA KIDNAPS Frozen Elsa & Spiderman!", or "Frozen Elsa FLUSHES Spiderman in Toilet!". The website commented that the videos were "pretty twisted for children's content: some videos involve Elsa giving birth, and in some others, Spider-Man injects Elsa with a brightly colored liquid. You half expect the scenarios to be porn setups." In most videos, the like and dislike options were disabled, making it impossible to know how many users were actually engaging with them. Many videos featured hundreds of comments in gibberish, some being written by similar channels in an apparent attempt to attract more clicks.

In March, the BBC
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