“Toy Freaks”—Creators of Bad Baby Videos—Shut Down By YouTube

• Greg Chism, the father of two behind the Toy Freaks channel, has had all of his content removed from YouTube as some have criticized his videos as child abuse. YouTube has a lot of content made specifically for children, however, some of it is highly inappropriate for young viewers. Some videos are even presented as content specifically for children, but are actually sick, disturbing remixes of the original content, often containing violent or sexually suggestive imagery. The now defunct YouTube channel “Toy Freaks” was similar in that it seemed to be for kids, but the content was very disturbing. “Toy Freaks” is one of the many channels that were run by Greg Chism. “Toy Freaks” featured Chism’s two daughters, often being put into humiliating situations. As BuzzFeed reports, Chism filmed his young daughters screaming in fear, bathing, pretending to be babies, spitting up food, being force-fed, and “peeing” — all viewed millions of times on YouTube. Chism would often barge into the bathroom while his daughters were bathing or playing, and throw animals like frogs and snakes at them. Chism also had his daughters, ages 6 and 8, pretend to be babies and filmed them. The two girls pretended to be babies in the videos, and were filmed spitting up on themselves and each other, eating baby food and crayons, and wetting themselves. The videos created the “Bad Baby” trend, which has been copied numerous times by other family YouTube channels. However, many people who viewed the videos have reported “Toy Freaks” to YouTube, but to no effect. It was only after YouTube updated it’s YouTube Kids App this month that Chism’s content quickly came down. In a statement, Chism said  “YouTube updated its Kids App and community guidelines to allow for stronger regulation and flagging ability for parents. Later that day, three of our videos that we did not know were on the Kids App were flagged by the community resulting in the Toy Freaks channel being terminated.” After that, Chism voluntarily took the rest of his content down. According to Greg, he was just making videos people wanted to see. “It was just family videos, I take videos with my kids and post them up there, just like home stuff playing in the living room, playing with toys and stuff,’ Chism said.’I started to see a pattern, where some videos would get more views than others. So I focused on that, I analyzed each video, the description, the titles, the tags – everything involved in making that video and what made it a success, and I tried to repeat it. And I’ve had some good luck with that.” However, it didn’t seem to occur to Greg to ask what kind of audience he was attracting. I What is your reaction to “Toy Freaks” being shut down? How do you monitor what your kids watch online? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter at @WhatsTrending.

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