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Elsagate (derived from Elsa from the Frozen franchise and the -gate scandal suffix) is a controversy surrounding videos on YouTube and YouTube Kids that were labelled as "child-friendly" but contained themes that were considered inappropriate for children and younger audiences.

These videos often featured fictional characters from family-oriented media, sometimes via crossovers, used without legal permission. The controversy also included channels that focused on real-life children, such as Toy Freaks, that raised concern about possible child abuse. The videos were sometimes tagged in such a way as to circumvent YouTube's child safety algorithms, and some appeared on YouTube Kids. These videos were difficult to moderate due to the large scale of YouTube. In order to capture search results and attract attention from users, their buzzword titles and descriptions featured the names of the fictional characters, as well as keywords such as "education", "learn colors", and "nursery rhymes". That year—after reports on child safety on YouTube by several media outlets—YouTube adopted stricter guidelines regarding children's content. In late November, the platform deleted channels and videos falling into the Elsagate category, as well as large amounts of other inappropriate videos or user comments relating to children. While these efforts, intended to wipe the platform of Elsagate-related media, curbed much of the older content, as of the 2020s, similar videos and channels (this time utilizing video games popular with children) have been found to remain pervasively accessible to children on YouTube.

The article also reported that several nearly identical channels, named Toy Monster, The Superheroes Life, and The Kids Club, had appeared on YouTube. Also in February, The Awl published an article on Webs and Tiaras and similar channels, describing their content as "nonsensically nightmarish" and "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.

In November 2017, several newspapers published articles about the YouTube channel Toy Freaks, which had been created five years earlier by a single father named Greg Chism. On November 4, The New York Times published an article about the "startling" videos slipping past YouTube's filters and disturbing children, "either by mistake or because bad actors have found ways to fool the YouTube Kids' algorithms." On November 6, author James Bridle wrote on Medium of their worry about videos aimed at scaring, hurting, and exploiting children. On November 22, BuzzFeed News published an article about unsettling videos that depict children in disturbing and abusive situations. According to a report by China News Service, many Elsagate clips had been re-uploaded onto Chinese video platforms from YouTube, but others were created domestically, involving youngsters being beaten with rulers and children giving each other injections. Recent history and Elsagate videos related to popular video games (2020s) Although YouTube initiated a crackdown on Elsagate content in 2017, videos hosting similar content have continued to be found on the website in the following years. Much of the content is based on video game IPs popular with children, such as Minecraft, Among Us or Poppy Playtime, and is both marketed towards and freely accessible to children. While YouTube Kids disallows inappropriate content and is intended to steer children away from the main app, its efficiency has been called into question. Still, the magazine acknowledged the 2017 purge and stated that their findings didn't represent "a direct Elsagate repeat", noting that these videos were not on YouTube Kids, that much of their shocking content was limited to the thumbnails only, and that many of the more obvious ways of targeting children had been challenged by the purge. In 2022, Newsweek also reported on channels and videos containing similarly inappropriate content or thumbnails, featuring characters from horror games such as Five Nights at Freddy's and Poppy Playtime that were popular with children.

Quick Facts

• In late November, the platform deleted channels and videos falling into the Elsagate category, as well as large amounts of other inappropriate videos or user comments relating to children.
• The videos were sometimes tagged in such a way as to circumvent YouTube's child safety algorithms, and some appeared on YouTube Kids.
• Although YouTube initiated a crackdown on Elsagate content in 2017, videos hosting similar content have continued to be found on the website in the following years.
• The controversy also included channels that focused on real-life children, such as Toy Freaks, that raised concern about possible child abuse.
• These videos often featured fictional characters from family-oriented media, sometimes via crossovers, used without legal permission.

Source material: Wikipedia - "Elsagate". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.