Elsagate

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 characters from family-oriented media, sometimes via crossovers, used without permission. The controversy also included channels that focused on real children, such as Toy Freaks, that raised concern about possible child abuse. Most videos were produced either with live action or Flash animation, but some used claymation or computer-generated imagery. 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. To capture search results and attract attention, their buzzword titles and descriptions featured the names of the fictional characters as well as keywords such as "education", "learn colors", and "nursery rhymes". They also included automatically placed commercials, making them lucrative for their owners and YouTube. Public awareness of the phenomenon grew in late 2017. 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 using video games popular with children) have been found to remain pervasively accessible to children on YouTube.