\n<\/p>\n
This piece is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers\u00a0exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute\u2019s world-class team of scholars.<\/i><\/p>\n
Since 2016, governments, media, and tech companies have warned about online disinformation targeting adults. Far less attention has been paid to the information tools increasingly shaping children, even as such \u201ckid-safe\u201d platforms become more embedded into the internet\u2019s trust infrastructure.<\/p>\n
One significant child-focused platform,\u00a0Kiddle<\/span><\/a>, delivers a striking pattern of geopolitical and ideological framing that softens authoritarian regimes and extremist movements while presenting itself as a trusted educational resource. Foreign terrorist organizations, like Hamas and Hezbollah, are whitewashed. Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine is downgraded to a \u201cmilitary operation<\/span><\/a>,\u201d mirroring Kremlin language, while Joseph Stalin\u2019s role in Russian history is\u00a0reduced<\/span><\/a>\u00a0to his success in building a \u201cstrong, modern nation.\u201d<\/p>\n Launched in 2014, Kiddle, which bills itself as a visual search engine for kids, appears prominently in Google searches, often ranking near the top of results. When asked for child-safe educational resources, ChatGPT recommended Kiddle alongside legacy institutions like Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica, World Book, National Geographic, and the Smithsonian.<\/p>\n While it boasts far\u00a0less traffic<\/span><\/a>\u00a0than other search engines, Kiddle\u2019s role in information infrastructure gives it outsize influence, as schools, libraries, and even PTAs link to the site. The International Society for Technology in Education (ITSE), an association with 100,000 education stakeholders,\u00a0recommends<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Kiddle on its website, noting that \u201cresults are vetted by editors.\u201d The top referrer of traffic to Kiddle in early 2026 was DiscoveryK12, an online homeschool curriculum.<\/p>\n Yet the content is less kid-friendly than expected. The platform\u2019s article on\u00a0Vladimir Putin<\/span><\/a>, for example, offers a softened portrayal of the Russian president. Putin is presented as a peacemaker who is \u201cknown for ending the Second Chechen War.\u201d When it comes to Putin\u2019s successive wars of territorial conquest, Kiddle users learn only that under Putin, Russia \u201ctook control of Crimea\u201d and \u201csupported a war in eastern Ukraine.\u201d While the need to present information to children in simple language can be appreciated, this characterization is jarringly at odds with nearly a decade of horrific warfare.<\/p>\n “Hamas facts for kids<\/span><\/a>”\u00a0informs young readers that \u201cHamas grew out of an Islamic charity\u201d and supports \u201cPalestinian nationalism,\u201d meaning that it \u201cbelieve[s] in the idea of a Palestinian nation.\u201d Kiddle says that the U.S.-designated terrorist group\u2019s \u201cfight is with Zionists.\u201d The word \u201cterrorist\u201d is mentioned just once, at the bottom of the article. Former Hamas leader and October 7 planner\u00a0Yahya Sinwar<\/span><\/a>\u00a0is portrayed as a \u201cvery important leader\u201d who \u201csaid he wanted to work for \u2018peaceful, popular resistance\u2019 against the Israeli presence.\u201d<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s\u00a0Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps<\/span><\/a>, meanwhile, is \u201ca special part of Iran\u2019s military\u201d whose goal is to \u201cprotect the Islamic Revolution.\u201d Curious kids will also learn that the IRGC \u201cwork[s] to keep the country stable.\u201d The late Ayatollah Khamenei, Kiddle\u00a0claims<\/span><\/a>, \u201csupported Iran\u2019s nuclear program for peaceful uses.\u201d He was also a \u201cstrong supporter of the Persian language\u201d with a penchant for poetry. No mention is made of the 2025-2026 protests during which state forces \u2014 acting at Khamenei\u2019s direction \u2014 killed around\u00a030,000 civilians<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n Occasionally, a Russo- and Sino-centric view of key conflicts and figures shines through. \u201cHassan Nasrallah facts for kids<\/span><\/a>\u201d acknowledges that Hezbollah has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, but it notes that \u201csome countries like Russia and China have different views.\u201d Kiddle even clarifies that Russia considers Hezbollah a \u201clegal social and political organization.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUyghur people facts for kids<\/span><\/a>\u201d makes no mention of the genocide against China\u2019s Muslim minority ethnic group, Chinese state-run concentration camps, or any of the abuses committed against these people. In a similar vein, the article on the\u00a0Wuhan Institute of Virology<\/span><\/a>\u00a0leaves out the most important single fact about the center: it is considered the likely\u00a0origin point<\/span><\/a>\u00a0of COVID-19.<\/p>\n Despite positioning itself as a trusted educational resource for children, Kiddle reveals almost nothing about who controls its platform or how its editorial decisions are made. The site publicly identifies no editors, no leadership team, no ownership entity, and no meaningful editorial standards governing politically sensitive material presented to children.<\/p>\n Ownership is obscured behind a U.S.-based privacy proxy. Kiddle does not disclose its founders, does not claim nonprofit status, and provides no public explanation of its governance structure despite operating as a heavily trafficked educational platform embedded across American schools and libraries.<\/p>\n The site\u2019s Google-adjacent branding makes understanding the nature of the platform much more difficult. Its search bar features the Google logo with the term \u201cCustom Search.\u201d In 2016,\u00a0EdTech Magazine<\/i>\u00a0reported<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that while Kiddle was not affiliated with the search giant, its results \u201care powered by Google, tailored to the needs of kids.\u201d The site\u2019s name seems like a reference to Google, and its primary-color-heavy logo is a distinct echo of the search giant. Schools, libraries, educational blogs, and even professional\u00a0educational<\/span><\/a>\u00a0organizations<\/span><\/a>\u00a0have<\/span><\/a>\u00a0repeatedly<\/span><\/a>\u00a0described Kiddle as a Google product or as \u201cdeveloped by Google.\u201d<\/p>\n Kiddle\u2019s\u00a0privacy policy<\/span><\/a>\u00a0states that the platform uses cookies \u201cto personalize content and ads\u201d and shares user information with advertising and analytics partners. That language raises a red flag concerning Google\u2019s own\u00a0advertising protections<\/span><\/a>\u00a0around child-directed services, which expressly forbid cookies that personalize ads. When I tested the site, Kiddle served children ads for cybersecurity threat reports, shopping extensions, mobile phone plans, steroid-related supplements, Robux acquisition guides, and other commercial content unrelated to education. Some ads solicited personal information directly through lead-generation forms \u2014 a clear violation of Google\u2019s child-protection-related privacy policies. (Neither Kiddle nor Google responded to a request for comment for this article.)<\/p>\n A 2016 investigation by EdSurge\u00a0suggested<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that Russian-born entrepreneur Vladislav Golunov\u2014previously\u00a0associated<\/span><\/a>\u00a0with the search engine Lukol\u2014may be the site\u2019s creator. But a decade later, we still don\u2019t know who owns, operates, or oversees the site.<\/p>\n Kiddle has plans to expand into AI, with a new website,\u00a0kiddle.ai<\/span><\/a>, already live. Branded as \u201cAI for kids,\u201d the product is scheduled for release in July. DNS and hosting records show overlap between kiddle.ai and a subdomain, deepseek.kiddle.co, which references the Chinese AI company DeepSeek. While the exact relationship remains unclear, the appearance of Chinese AI branding alongside an opaque educational search platform with unknown ownership structures and problematic content raises further questions about who is building systems designed to engage kids at an important inflection point in the history of digital information.<\/p>\n None of this establishes definitively that Kiddle has a relationship with America\u2019s enemies. But it does underscore how little transparency exists around a platform increasingly trusted to mediate information for children. A search engine recommended by schools, surfaced by Google, and cited by AI systems operates with no publicly known editors, no disclosed governance structure, and no meaningful public accountability.<\/p>\n That combination \u2014 institutional trust, opaque control, ideological framing, child targeting, AI amplification, and hidden governance \u2014 is what makes Kiddle more than just another strange corner of the internet. The platform has quietly embedded itself into the infrastructure through which children learn about war, politics, terrorism, and history. And almost nobody appears to know who is shaping that information, how those decisions are made, or whose interests it serves.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n This is republished with permission from the Manhattan Institute\u2019s City Journal. The original can be found <\/i>here<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n Ashley Rindsberg is an investigative journalist and founder of\u00a0<\/i>NPOV<\/span><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n