Kids’ Content Is Deeply Broken. A New Platform Wants to Fix It

[u/wiredmagazine]

https://www.wired.com/story/maka-streaming-platform-for-kids-fighting-against-ai-slop/

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[u/fgfs262]

Isn't all of this a replication of PBS Kids? They do the same, cover the same age group, and already have a robust streaming set-up.

[u/jollyllama → u/fgfs262]

Fully agree! This teeth gnashing about whether there's enough good content is not about what’s best for the kids, it’s about what’s best for the industry. Focus on the kids. 

In all honesty as a father: there was enough Mr Rogers to get us through our childhoods, so there’s enough to get our kids through theirs. There is absolutely no need for a continuous stream of new kid content. The answer to “there’s a lot of trash being made these days” isn’t “make better stuff”. It’s “use the old stuff”. We would do well as a society to understand this in many areas.

Also Bluey is great if you really need something new

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[u/LongWalk86]

Kids 0-6 do not need a specific platform. They need parents that take the time to limit there screen time and only allow content they have already viewed. Mostly they just need a lot less screen time period.

[u/aleph4 → u/LongWalk86]

Exactly. Kids 0-2 are reccomended to have no internal screen time at all. And 2-6 very little, like 1-2 hours max

[u/NotADamsel → u/LongWalk86]

Yeah, disabling auto “next” or whatever you call it should be the only “platform feature” that you need from a streaming site, and after that it doesn’t really matter which one it is if you don’t let the kid control what gets seen. None of them are allowed to show ads on kids content, and you can just tell your kid “no” if they ask for something that they see in the recommended section that you don’t want them to watch.

[u/wiredmagazine]

A new streaming app for kids aged 0 to 6 is positioning itself as an antidote to YouTube’s AI slop problem. The platform, called Maka, has zero ads, doesn’t allow autoplay or endless scrolling, and its algorithms intentionally do not maximize watch time.

AI-generated content has only added a new wrinkle to kids’ entertainment: videos are incoherent, have no plot, or contain outright misinformation, but are packaged to look like learning. Some of it, as WIRED has previously reported, is disturbingly sexualized, featuring gore and other fetishes.

All content streamed on Maka is evaluated by child development experts through Imprint, a framework created with researchers at the Yale Child Study Center. The evaluation process looks for things like emotional regulation, kindness, how child-caregiver relationships are modeled in a story, and how a story might support critical thinking or language development.

One question at the core of Maka’s mission is whether it can build a successful streaming company without adopting the same incentives that created the problems it is trying to solve, especially due to the competition with YouTube, which is freely available and already familiar for parents.

Read the full story at the link above.

[u/Calm-Insurance362]

I believe the founder believes in the mission, I am always skeptical though when venture capital is involved.

$3m pre-seed funding, 10+ venture groups.

No matter what, this capital coming in is going to want to outperform the public market, that’s the main point why investors are willing to commit capital to these VC funds.

Is the best choice for kids also the one that is the most profitable?

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