I have been getting a particular advertisement showing up in my podcast rotation for a while now, and not only is the advertisement contrived, it seems to be selling a service that claims quite an impressive list of things. Perhaps I have read one too many ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
synecdochic essays, or I have been hanging around too many people who have to examine services from the lens of "how could someone with malice and planning break this service?" but I had suspicions, and decided I would take a closer look at the service's claims to see if there were places where, were I a person with malice and planning, I could cause problems on purpose. [Honk.]
The service in question is called Zigazoo, pronounced zig-ah-zoo, and in the podcast advertisements and on the website, it claims to be "The World's Largest Social Network for Kids!"
The podcast advertisement purports to have a conversation between two children, one who is saying they saw the other's Zigazoo content and thinks the other person is really talented (while the other person has an "OMG, you watched it?" reaction ro finding this out.) That's one vector where things could immediately go pear-shaped, if the kids that are posting know each other outside of the platform, but that's not something that Zigazoo can control, so it would be unfair to hit them for anything other than portraying an unrealistic conversations between children.
( The claims that Zigazoo makes about being safe for kids online )
( Then comes the advertising and affiliate programs )
( And then there's the trove of uploaded videos. )
I freely admit, the amount of social media time that I think is appropriate for children until they are sufficiently understanding of what they might encounter online and what they should do if they hit the parts of online that are not well-behaved is none. And that "none" includes grownups putting them on social media. Anything relayed online about that kid should be done with permission and understanding. If the kid cannot understand or give permission, or doesn't, then it doesn't go there. So I am inclined to find the concept of Zigazoo itself terrible and ask what the people who created it were thinking they were going to do. Child-safe Tiktok? If that's what they were aiming for, there's still some work to go, I think, in the "Child-safe" part of it. I suspect the actual answer of what Zigazoo is for is the advertising dollars being spent to entice kids and grownups and the opportunity for companies to sponsor children with their products. And that is very much not child-safe, even if it is COPPA-compliant.
synecdochic essays, or I have been hanging around too many people who have to examine services from the lens of "how could someone with malice and planning break this service?" but I had suspicions, and decided I would take a closer look at the service's claims to see if there were places where, were I a person with malice and planning, I could cause problems on purpose. [Honk.]The service in question is called Zigazoo, pronounced zig-ah-zoo, and in the podcast advertisements and on the website, it claims to be "The World's Largest Social Network for Kids!"
The podcast advertisement purports to have a conversation between two children, one who is saying they saw the other's Zigazoo content and thinks the other person is really talented (while the other person has an "OMG, you watched it?" reaction ro finding this out.) That's one vector where things could immediately go pear-shaped, if the kids that are posting know each other outside of the platform, but that's not something that Zigazoo can control, so it would be unfair to hit them for anything other than portraying an unrealistic conversations between children.
( The claims that Zigazoo makes about being safe for kids online )
( Then comes the advertising and affiliate programs )
( And then there's the trove of uploaded videos. )
I freely admit, the amount of social media time that I think is appropriate for children until they are sufficiently understanding of what they might encounter online and what they should do if they hit the parts of online that are not well-behaved is none. And that "none" includes grownups putting them on social media. Anything relayed online about that kid should be done with permission and understanding. If the kid cannot understand or give permission, or doesn't, then it doesn't go there. So I am inclined to find the concept of Zigazoo itself terrible and ask what the people who created it were thinking they were going to do. Child-safe Tiktok? If that's what they were aiming for, there's still some work to go, I think, in the "Child-safe" part of it. I suspect the actual answer of what Zigazoo is for is the advertising dollars being spent to entice kids and grownups and the opportunity for companies to sponsor children with their products. And that is very much not child-safe, even if it is COPPA-compliant.
