There is a special place in hell for the YouTube product people: Youtube Kids

by devrimco • 5 years ago

70 30 5 years ago

mox12• 5 years ago

Did I miss something?

We have a paid Youtube subscription and the Youtube kids Ipad application. I have it set to show only the channels or videos I have approved. I deleted everything it started with, and whitelisted 10 or so channels that I reviewed.

I monitor my kids pretty closely, I haven't seen any "extra" videos ever show up....

devrimco7• 5 years ago

We also have a paid Youtube subscription and the Youtube kids Ipad application. And these options that you mentioned does not exist, in any other country than US I guess, are you in US?

Plus other things that I mentioned like that "you can not filter or sort or limit based on your subscriptions" is still the same I guess.

mox12• 5 years ago

Yep I am in the US. The "whitelisting" option wasn't exactly easy to find. You have to login to the kids app as an adult, setup a special kid profile, activate that profile, THEN whitelist.

I remember getting pretty frustrated at how complicated it was, but I eventually got it.

stolenmerch• 5 years ago

Same here. We are pretty liberal with our child and YouTube yet keep tabs on what he watches. We use YouTube kids and the restrictions on normal paid YouTube and haven't had a problem yet.

edit: I see, we're in the U.S.

alvarlagerlof• 5 years ago

I can't read this on my phone.

devrimco7• 5 years ago

really? what's the phone? as its readable on an old android..

jdefelice• 5 years ago

I think the person above is referring to the text being very small on a mobile device. The font size is set to 2.5vw which renders the text as 9.375px on a device width of 375px.

marstall• 5 years ago

agreed, that's why we don't let our kid use YouTube at all

mokarma• 5 years ago

Personally I just use Safe Vision (https://safe.vision/) to filter down to specific Channels on my kids Devices. It uses Youtube under the hood, but has a parental control layer on top of it.

devrimco7• 5 years ago

thank you, this I'll definitely try. there were several applications like this I tried before, that only add the features that youtube do not give, and in the shortest period of time gets buried due to api-call restrictions, api pay-walls and more, if your app is ever popular..

cityzen• 5 years ago

Google is an advertising company. They own YouTube. This is the way.

chuckee• 5 years ago

But it definitely feels like Youtube just wants dump its entire garbage all over you (via algorithm suggestions) even if you have premium paid accounts.

Reminds me of danegeld. Don't feed the beast.

rfwhyte• 5 years ago

Sounds like the author is just frustrated he can't offload his parental responsibilities onto YouTube.

You are your child's parent. Not YouTube. If you want to control what you child watches, its on you to figure that out, not for YouTube to do it for you.

If you don't like the controls YouTube provides, don't use it. Or better yet be an actual functioning parent and don't just plop your kid down in front of screen and expect it to parent for you.

Play with your kid. Do activities with them. There are near limitless other far more healthy ways a kid could be spending their time other than watching YouTube, but that stuff takes time and attention, so rather than spend that time and attention on their actual child, the author would rather spend it writing whiny blog posts.

xg15• 5 years ago

You are your child's parent. Not YouTube. If you want to control what you child watches, its on you to figure that out, not for YouTube to do it for you.

This is all well and good up to the point where YouTube starts to actively undermine the parent's efforts. Then it becomes "it's your fault for not defending yourself" bully logic. I believe this is what the author was complaining about.

If you don't like the controls YouTube provides, don't use it. Or better yet be an actual functioning parent and don't just plop your kid down in front of screen and expect it to parent for you.

So you're implying kids shouldn't use YouTube at all? This seems both overly broad and impractical. Depending on the age of the child, it might not even be possible, e.g. if watching a video is required for school.

Play with your kid. Do activities with them. There are near limitless other far more healthy ways a kid could be spending their time other than watching YouTube

So you're agreeing that YouTube Kids as a product shouldn't exist?

aaomidi• 5 years ago

Sounds like the author is just frustrated he can't offload his parental responsibilities onto YouTube.

So, they can't call out companies for being shit? Being able to pick videos from channels you subscribe to is an accessibility issue, not even a "parent for me" issue.

Accessibility has a lot of forms, one of them is the inability to self-regulate and self-control when there are external factors. It's not "unreasonable" to ask YouTube to provide accessibility features like this. It is, however, unreasonable to victim blame people on these websites.

webmobdev• 5 years ago

If you don't like the controls YouTube provides, don't use it.

That's the standard cop-out reply to every criticism BigTech or it's product gets here on HN - "Oh you don't like that, then don't use it". It's the Apple culture infecting the other corporates trying to ape their business model and closed ecosystem - "The problem is not with us, but with you, because we know what's best for you better than you do."

Gigachad• 5 years ago

A product targeted for kids should be suitable for kids. I do not see any way around this. If a child’s toy at the store contained razor blades, no one would say “oh well the parent was meant to check for razor blades in the toy first. I see no issue with the toy.”

devrimco7• 5 years ago

as other friends have definitely replied with the answers in my mind I've been left with last piece of this beautiful comment:

so rather than spend that time and attention on their actual child, the author would rather spend it writing whiny blog posts

first-of-all this is definitely a response of a non-parent or a parent with a nanny 7/24, because after spending 23 hours with your kid you give 1 hour to both her/him and yourself to cool off and chill. by the way you should not allow your kid to run around in the park 8 hours, as you should not allow your kid to a screen time of multiple hours. but, believe me you both need that 1 hour of screen time. some times just to relax sometimes for them to watch some educational / funny / interesting videos.

and you definitely need that an app that is actually the app that ALL THE VIDEO CONTENT, especially for children, in ALL LANGUAGES, in the world is currently uploaded and reachable globally, the app that you pay for this purpose to act properly, or perhaps have some features that you need.

this uninformed and disrespectful defense that you make on behalf of Youtube, an app, against its users' request for a feature, or "whining" for the lack of one, does not make sense.

chrisjc2• 5 years ago

Based on the assertiveness and authority of your comment, it's probably safe to assume you're a parent too. As a parent, your comment has made me very curious.

You're also on a tech-heavy forum, indicating two other things. You probably work in a stressful and demanding field/industry/company and you also have time to browse and comment online when work or the partner aren't a-callin'.

And yet based on your comment you're always able to give you kids your complete and undivided attention?

I'd love to hear how you are able to accomplish of this?

It's not an attack on your or a declaration of doubt, but as a parent that struggles with the urge of turning on Word Party for hour so that you can get some time to collect yourself after a long and challenging day, I'd really love to hear some advice or recommendations on how to be so attentive and devoted to your kids.

saganus3• 5 years ago

A bit off-topic but, does anyone have an explanation of why you can't save a video marked for kids, into a playlist?

I've encountered videos that aren't really "for kids", but are marked as so for whatever reason and when I click on "save" (to playlist) I get an error saying that I can't do that.

That does not make any sense to me...but perhaps I'm missing something?

devrimco7• 5 years ago

yes! this is also a great point. YOU CAN NOT MAKE A PLAYLIST OF KID SONGS FOR YOUR CHILD ON YOUTUBE. Do you see how weird this looks?

chrisjc2• 5 years ago

It's very strange and there was in the past some garbled youtube language about why you can't. I read it and still didn't understand what it was trying to convey.

While you can't make playlists personally, "kid playlists" do show up when you search and my experiences have been disturbing whenever i try any.

The playlist starts with a video or two that you were probably searching for originally. You step away to unload the dishwasher or take care of the laundry while the little one continues to watch. Then all of a sudden an acid-trip, parody version of one of the previous videos kicks in with jarring effects, questionable and suggestive content and lyrics. But it never quite crosses a line that would get it kicked off of youtube. Viewed alone it might come off as funny to an adult or even teenager.

How and why were the users of these playlists able to add/mix kids content with this other garbage and yet I can't make a private playlist with personally curated content?

I will never allow my kid to watch youtube unless i'm picking personally previewed content.

Edit: just to be clear these "kids playlists" do not contain content uploaded by the same user that created the playlist.

Edit2: I am (we are) also premium users.

saganus3• 5 years ago

Yeah, I remember reading a lot about those playlists, and I understasnd that can be pretty disturbing or upsetting if you as a parent assume that a playlist is "safe".

However if YT already has the ability to mark videos as for kids-only, I have no idea why wouldn't they be able to restrict playlists that contain even a single video that is not kids-only.

I.e. if you want to have a YT Kids' playlist, then all videos need to be YT Kids.

But the other way around (i.e. a regular playlist with some YT Kids videos) seems irrational.

washadjeffmad• 5 years ago

YouTube is bastion for grooming and child exploitation through its unprincipled design and lax moderation, and in an attempt to remedy this without shaking parental faith in their child-profit machine, Google has allowed elective disabling of the two most common ways to influence targets and connect abusers to potential victims: the comments section, which does not allow seeing other comments by a user, and playlists, which can be made private and shared, coordinated, and extended on external mediums.

You didn't miss anything they didn't want you to miss. Massive companies like Google with social media products can afford lawyers, PR and marketing teams, and experts on human behaviors. The ad era brings in phenomenal wealth, but can we all bear the cost?

saganus3• 5 years ago

I can understand disabling the comments section, but for playlists I would've expected that you could only make playlists with all videos from the kids section, or if you add a kids video to a regular playlist, then that playlist can't be played in YT Kids.

But not being able to add a kids video to my own playlist, being an adult and such, seems... incoherent.

ehPReth• 5 years ago

For those wondering here’s the full list of features they make unavailable: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9632097?hl=en

+annoyingly: “Playback in the Miniplayer”

tomjuggler• 5 years ago

No, my kid does not get access to YouTube, I download videos with Freetube or NewPipe and he watches them offline.

Unfortunately there really isn't anywhere else with the amount of content (good and bad)

There is a special place in hell for the YouTube product people: Youtube Kids

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