Maka Takes Aim at YouTube’s AI Slop Problem With Ad-Free Streaming for Young Kids

If you have a young child—or know someone who does—you may already be familiar with YouTube’s growing AI slop problem.

Videos aimed at children are often packed with bizarre, overstimulating, and sometimes age-inappropriate AI-generated content. These videos can autoplay in endless streams, interrupted by ads and curated by algorithms designed to keep viewers watching.

Maka offers a different approach to children’s streaming

Maka, a new streaming app for children ages 0 to 6, is positioning itself as an alternative to that model. The platform has no ads, does not allow autoplay or infinite scrolling, and says its algorithms are not designed to maximize watch time.

Taniela Reta, the company’s co-founder and chief product officer, told WIRED that Maka is intentionally abandoning mechanisms that turn children’s media into an “engagement machine.”

Maka CEO and co-founder Isabel Sheinman says many streaming services are built to serve adults rather than children. “The kids really took a backseat,” she says. Sheinman wants to establish higher standards for children’s media, which she says has been shaped by harmful incentives. “Maka was built first and foremost with child development science and child behavior in mind.”

Children’s shows reviewed by development experts

Launching today, Maka’s programming slate combines licensed content from global studios with shows from independent creators. The carefully selected catalog includes 25 shows, including Franklin, The Wiggles, Pocoyo, Vida the Vet, and Sesame Street. The platform operates as a subscription service, with monthly plans priced at $15 and annual plans priced at $107.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Sheinman and Reta began thinking seriously about how to redesign children’s media. Their solution is to have every episode streamed on Maka rated by child development experts using an evaluation framework created with researchers at the Yale Child Study Center.

The evaluation process examines everything from scene cuts and pacing to the broader ways content can support children’s development across seven core domains. These include emotional regulation, kindness, caregiver relationships as modeled in stories, critical thinking, and language development.

Why parents are concerned about AI-generated kids’ videos

AI-generated content has added a new challenge to children’s entertainment. Some videos are disjointed, lack a coherent story, or contain outright misinformation while being packaged as educational content. As WIRED previously reported, some videos are also disturbingly sexual and feature gore or other fetishes.

Michael Robb, research director at media literacy nonprofit Common Sense Media, says platforms such as YouTube often place poorly designed videos masquerading as educational content alongside carefully produced educational programming.

Robb says YouTube and other children’s streaming platforms are not doing enough to distinguish high-quality educational programming from low-quality content, making it more difficult for parents to filter what their children watch. “Platforms are taking steps to ensure that children are not exposed to age-inappropriate content, and that’s important. But the bar for ‘not inappropriate’ is very low. There’s a huge gap between that and media that is intentionally created with children in mind.”

A 2020 survey by Common Sense Media found that 75 percent of YouTube videos watched by young children had “weak or no educational value.” The study also found that children frequently viewed advertisements and content intended for older audiences.

Maka’s launch reflects a growing push to create children’s streaming services around child development and intentional viewing rather than maximum engagement.