[hedora]

There’s definitely an inversion going on, where all the predators (individuals and corporations) target parts of the internet designed for children, and the kid’s platforms created financial incentives for themselves that mean the worst content bubbles to the top.

I thought youtube kids was sketchy as hell until I discovered the current state of “educational” online games.

[bubblewand]

I'd never have guessed it'd be the case, but the number of "educational" games has exploded since I was a kid, while I'm not sure the rate of new ones that are any good at educating (not proportion, actual count) is even as high as it was in the '90s. It's kind of amazing. It appears that, for some reason, the market's way bigger but being any good isn't a useful differentiator for the purposes of sorting out who gets money. I mean you expect that to be the case with ad-supported, but paid edutainment games are like that too. It's so weird, my kids have been around for the golden age of the App Store and beyond, and there's been vanishingly little in the way of good edutainment games that entire time. A few, but it's so very few.

[hedora]

As I understand it, Sierra acquired most of the educational software outfits, and then was acquired for stock by a company that had been propped up by securities fraud.

Here’s the story of the acquisition that killed the company:

https://www.filfre.net/2025/04/the-end-of-sierra-as-we-knew-...

That site probably has the story of the educational software consolidation somewhere.