Internet Download Manager Not Working With Youtubel
Borna Force
The eight-year-old appears to be locked in a foam cage alongside her older brother, Roma. Their father, dressed in a police costume, tells them they need to complete a set of puzzles in order to receive the keys to escape their imprisonment.
The keys, foam cage, and police costume are all part of a high-production "escape room" challenge video, which, like many other videos on the channel, feature Diana and Roma playing with elaborate, colorful props and confidently speaking to the camera as they complete tasks.
The huge success of the channel also comes with drawbacks though, and family channels have faced particular scrutiny in recent years over concerns for the mental health and safety of the children featured.
Olena and Volodymyr Kidisyuk told Insider they have no plans to stop filming their kids as long as they enjoy it, even though it makes giving them "normal" lives increasingly difficult as they become internet celebrities.
They told Insider they enjoyed watching their young children play and interact, so they kept "video memories," posting short clips of the children, who were aged two and one at the time, on YouTube starting in 2015, so family members could stay up to date on their growth.
"We didn't really know anything about YouTube at the time. We were just looking for a good trustworthy platform where we could upload our videos and make sure that they would not get lost," they said.
The launch of their vlogs happened to coincide with the creation of YouTube Kids in 2015, which was launched as a "safe" and more controlled version of its standard platform, with parental controls and limited search settings.
Over time, Olena and Volodymyr started to notice that other people were posting videos about their children on family-vlogging channels, where parents typically share behind-the-scenes footage showing what raising kids is like.
The parents said they decided to start tailoring their videos toward an external audience by editing them and making them look more professional. They began posting vlog-style content about their children on separate channels, called Kids Diana Show and Kids Roma Show.
The parents and children spoke Russian in videos on the channel posted from 2015 to 2016, and they said their audience was largely made up of Russian-speaking people in countries like Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus.
Then in 2016, Kids Diana Show hit a million subscribers, and Olena and Volodymyr decided to pursue YouTube full-time. In 2018, they began to target a more global audience by captioning their videos in English and speaking in English more during filming.
The Kidisyuks told Insider that they started to notice that Diana's channel was growing much more rapidly than Kids Roma Show, which currently has 19.2 subscribers, so they decided to focus more on her channel, and they now see Kids Diana Show as a channel about the whole family.
Through their successes on YouTube, the family has been able to live abroad, first in Miami, where they stayed for a year, and now in Dubai, where they have been living for the past three years. They made the move because they felt that living in the US put them too far away from their family in Ukraine.
The couple declined to disclose their annual YouTube earnings, beyond saying that they make "millions" of dollars every year. Insider reported that in 2019, when the channel had roughly 32 million subscribers, it generated an estimated $2.8 million to $44.7 million annually, according to estimates based on data from analytics tracker SocialBlade.
Olena and Volodymyr told Insider they have set some of their YouTube earnings aside for their children, so they can go to "good universities" after leaving school, and are also investing in real estate to protect their wealth. However, they said they don't have any "specific plans" for managing their earnings or the extent to which their children would be able to access these earnings in the future.
While the Kids Diana Show channel, which is targeted at English-speaking viewers, currently has 100 million subscribers, the Kidisyuks also have tens of millions of followers on alternative channels, where their videos have been translated and dubbed into 20 other languages.
While Olena and Volodymyr started out on YouTube by filming and editing all their videos themselves, they said they've since hired a five-person team and also work with freelancers to help them produce content across their many channels.
Family vlogging channels have been facing increased levels of backlash from viewers in recent years. Some former child YouTubers, who are now adults, are now coming forward to complain about the effects of being raised online. Additionally, the Daily Dot reported that consumers are becoming wary of "child exploitation" and concerned by the extent to which a child can consent to sharing their lives online.
In January, Washington state introduced legislation to offer some protection to underage YouTubers. It proposes that family channels that earn at least 10 cents per view and that have a minor featured in at least 30% of content must set aside a percentage of the channel's income in a trust for the minor to access when they turn 18.
Earlier this year, UK's Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Committee released a report expressing concern that child content creators are "being used by parents and family members as a source of revenue, affecting their privacy and creating security risks." The committee recommended legislation to provide "provisions on working hours and conditions, mandate the protection of the child's earnings, ensure a right to erasure and bring the child's working arrangements under the oversight of local authorities."
"One of the secrets of our success and longevity on YouTube is that our kids do not perceive it like work at all. So, they do not learn any lines. They just come and play naturally," the Kidisyuks told Insider.
"If Diana wants to stop shooting videos for small kids when she becomes a teenager, and maybe wants to start doing something more adult, then that's okay, we're ready to take that chance and launch a new channel," they said, adding, "If either of them wants to terminate their YouTube career, and want to become an engineer or do some other profession, we are open to that as well. This is their choice, and we do not want to push them."
The parents also told Insider that in the event that Diana and Roma wanted to stop making videos, they would also consider rebranding their channel to center around their youngest child, Oliver, who is currently a year old.
There are also growing concerns around the way in which videos starring children might serve child predators, through YouTube's automated recommendation system that suggests what viewers should watch next based on previous searches.
In 2019, Wired reported that a network of child predators was organizing in the comments sections under videos where children could be seen in partially exposed clothing. YouTube disabled comments on kids' content that same year as a safeguarding measure.
"It's crucial for us not only to make our kids feel safe but also to make sure that small viewers could get a positive, inspiring, and learning experience from our channels. And it became easier when the comments had been turned off," Volodymyr said.
Olena told Insider that as parents they keep a "watchful eye" on their children to make sure they are safe, "Not only while reading messages from viewers, but also during walks outside and while doing other stuff. In general, they have limited access to the internet and use it only with enabled parental controls"
Volodymyr and Olena told Insider that even though Diana and Roma are still young, "they do realize how famous they are. If we go out to a mall in Dubai, for instance, we may get a queue of 50 people waiting to take a selfie with them."
The parents said they "do not see any really bad impact of fame on how the kids grow up or on their character." They said, "Diana is a very kind and very modest girl. She is happy when playing with other kids and there is no arrogance in her at all."
Ultimately, they said, "We do not feel that this fame has somehow influenced us. We don't sit around and think, 'wow, we are so famous.' We are mainly happy that our kids are healthy and don't have any problems," adding, "They have all they need in this life."
While all of us old folks weren't looking, YouTube became the training ground for the next generation of incredible horror filmmakers. One high-profile example: "Talk to Me" directors Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou learned their craft by making shorts on the internet before crafting their very slick, very scary A24 horror hit. But one less high-profile example is the one that's kept me awake at night, and counts as perhaps my favorite horror experience of 2023.
Parsons first hit my radar when he partnered with A24 and producer James Wan to bring his surreal and frightening horror short film series "The Backrooms" to theaters. That project is still in development, but because this guy is apparently nothing if not busy, he's also been working on a separate YouTube horror short film series while that cooks. That second project is called "The Oldest View," it currently consists of three episodes, and watching the third episode frightened me so much that I had to frequently press pause and walk around my home to chill my nerves. I watched it again the next day, this time with my wife, to make sure I wasn't crazy for finding it to be some of the most exciting and inventive horror filmmaking since 1999's "The Blair Witch Project."
I'm not going to tell you what "The Oldest View" is about, because I think its plot and reveals are best discovered at their own pace. I will say that it's found footage horror, told from the POV of a YouTube content creator who finds something inexplicable in an isolated spot of wilderness, and that it feels distinctly like the kind of horror tale that could only be cooked up by someone who grew up in the age of the internet. Its fascinations and interests are remarkably Gen Z, but relayed with such confidence that even us older folks can't help by gripped. (If you don't want to feel like you've done nothing with your life, don't look up Parsons' age.) And while I generally encourage you to watch all media on the biggest screen you own, I watched all three episodes of "The Oldest View" on my phone, in bed, and in the dark, and I highly suggest you do the same. It only adds to the ambience, to the sense that you're truly watching something found, the footage of someone who went a few steps too far toward something he should have avoided at all costs.
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