Elsagate

Elsagate (derived from Elsa from the Frozen franchise and the -gate scandal suffix) is a controversy surrounding videos on YouTube and YouTube Kids that were labelled as "child-friendly" but contained themes that were considered inappropriate for children and younger audiences. These videos often featured fictional characters from family-oriented media, sometimes via crossovers, used without legal permission. The controversy also included channels that focused on real-life children, such as Toy Freaks, that raised concern about possible child abuse.

Most videos in this category were produced either with live action or Flash animation, but some used claymation or computer-generated imagery. The videos were sometimes tagged in such a way as to circumvent YouTube's child safety algorithms, and some appeared on YouTube Kids. These videos were difficult to moderate due to the large scale of YouTube. In order to capture search results and attract attention from users, their buzzword titles and descriptions featured the names of the fictional characters, as well as keywords such as "education", "learn colors", and "nursery rhymes". They also included automatically placed commercials, making them lucrative to their owners and YouTube.