5 ms·

How are you managing "total curation"? Are you always there with them when they're on YouTube, or are you whitelisting specific channels in some way?

by Nition 9y ago

zo1 9y ago
Not the OP, but there is no way that I'm aware of to whitelist (or blacklist!) specific channels on youtube. And thanks to HTTPS, I can't even intercept + modify youtube pages at the network level. Thank you, privacy folks, hope you're happy! Alternatively, there is always kids.youtube.com which is weirdly just an app for Ios/Android. I haven't tried it, and myself have actively disabled/removed all Youtube from being accessible by the younglings. Curated media, decided by me is all they get to watch then.
- Nition 9y ago
  The YouTube Kids app has a really nice interface, but there's no whitelist option unfortunately. I wish there was. It does let you block videos or channels individually, but you can imagine how much good that does on a site as big as YouTube. As you say, it's also iOS/Android only. No PC option for kids at all.
- j_s 9y ago
  Does YouTube app/whatever not honor device-trusted root certs? I know Google pins some stuff, and some YouTube players are embedded in appliances. If it were possible to mitm HTTPS specifically for YouTube that would still be a lot of work, maybe a good Raspberry Pi project.
- ballenf 9y ago
  I'd look into youtube-dl. I tried all the parental controls on Youtube, Netflix, Amazon and devices only to finally realize that my idea of what's suitable doesn't have an equivalent rating. There are so many safe for any age videos that have a bunch of kids with the worst, most cynical attitudes and no respect for authority and then wholesome shows with "intense emotion" or whatever that get rated tv-14. So I download everything and put it on a USB hard drive hooked to a media hub.
  - Nition 9y ago
    I've got an Intel NUC I could do this with. Is there a video player app for iOS that kids could use (i.e. Interface isn't super complex), that'd play remote media? Edit: Looked into this myself just now. VLC Streamer looks decent, as does Infuse by Firecore.
    - j_s 9y ago
      Safari should work well enough with a webserver file listing of MP4s. You could drag an icon to the desktop for an HTML page with thumbnails if it was necessary to get fancy.
    - nathancahill 9y ago
      Also check out Plex Server. It's awesome. The management side is particularly well done.
      - Nition 9y ago
        Thanks, will do.
    - ballenf 9y ago
      VLC also has a great iOS app that can stream and/or download from a desktop running the companion app.
- heroprotagonist 9y ago
  I haven't tried it, but it should be possible to MITM SSL for your own machines since you have control over trusted certificate authorities. There might be a better article if you search deeper than I did to come up with a quick link, but here: https://blog.heckel.xyz/2013/07/01/how-to-use-mitmproxy-to-read-and-modify-https-traffic-of-your-phone/ https://blog.heckel.xyz/2013/07/01/how-to-use-mitmproxy-to-r...
  - zo1 9y ago
    Looks like a very nice find! I'll definitely be having a look at it, thank you.
  - cjbprime 9y ago
    I haven't tried it either, but many big name sites use certificate pinning to avoid the attacking form of this MITM.
    - mseebach 9y ago
      A manually trusted cert overrides pinning, it's only protecting against certs signed by another of the default installed certs (otherwise Google and others simply wouldn't work in many corporate environments).
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  The inability to blacklist channels is a major PITA. The Power of Block is powerful, and denial of it a major Internet dysfunction. I do believe you can hack at Squid to intercept HTTPS and terminate if for you, as well as run filtering (Squidguard), also possibly Dansguardian. Though I've not fully researched this yet. http://squidguard.org http://squidguard.org http://www.squid-cache.org http://www.squid-cache.org
  - fiddlerwoaroof 9y ago
    HSTS would probably be an issue, although you could configure squid/etc. to strip those headers.
jerf 9y ago
"Are you always there with them when they're on YouTube," That one. They currently have no independent access to YouTube. (Well... technically if they knew what buttons to push where they do. I'm not using high-tech to block them. But they don't know and I'm not teaching them yet.) Even a few years ago I might have considered this a bit much. But since "Elsa-gate" my mind on that has been changed. I know it's not just a weird conspiracy theory or something because I've even seen a couple of them pop up in my "related videos" list myself, and I don't really have a viewing profile that looks like a kids profile. (The reason why Elsa-gate is happening may be conspiracy theory related, but the brute fact that it is a thing is something I've seen first hand in my own feeds.) The increasingly aggressive targeting behavior across the Internet is I think something not to be taken lightly. Unfortunately we're going to have to raise our children to deal with it, but my considered opinion is that the best solution before the teen age years is to just cut it off entirely. It is not as if we are leaving them adrift, the only ones without tech in an increasingly technical world; my kids play Minecraft, they've seen enough of the current YouTube videos that they can discuss them at school, their school is using technology in a halfway sensible manner so the nine-year old can already type and the six-year-old is on the way. It's only certain segments of the Internet that they are better off just locked away from. Heck, it's not even terribly hypocritical of me... I lock myself away from those very same segments for the very same reason! I use uBlock origin pretty extensively, and whenever I see one of those bullshit Taboola blocks, I'm actively annoyed that they are so tuned that I find myself wanting to click through myself. (I'll know I've gone senile when I no longer can resist it.) I'm not magically immune to this crap, and I know it, so I avoid it. I rely on my own discipline to do it. But relying on a pre-teen's discipline is probably not a good plan.

How are you managing "total curation"? Are you always there with them when they're on YouTube, or are you whitelisting specific channels in some way?

by Nition 9y ago

How are you managing "total curation"? Are you always there with them when they're on YouTube, or are you whitelisting specific channels in some way?

zo1 9y ago

Not the OP, but there is no way that I'm aware of to whitelist (or blacklist!) specific channels on youtube. And thanks to HTTPS, I can't even intercept + modify youtube pages at the network level. Thank you, privacy folks, hope you're happy! Alternatively, there is always kids.youtube.com which is weirdly just an app for Ios/Android. I haven't tried it, and myself have actively disabled/removed all Youtube from being accessible by the younglings. Curated media, decided by me is all they get to watch then.

Nition 9y ago
The YouTube Kids app has a really nice interface, but there's no whitelist option unfortunately. I wish there was. It does let you block videos or channels individually, but you can imagine how much good that does on a site as big as YouTube. As you say, it's also iOS/Android only. No PC option for kids at all.
j_s 9y ago
Does YouTube app/whatever not honor device-trusted root certs? I know Google pins some stuff, and some YouTube players are embedded in appliances. If it were possible to mitm HTTPS specifically for YouTube that would still be a lot of work, maybe a good Raspberry Pi project.
ballenf 9y ago
I'd look into youtube-dl. I tried all the parental controls on Youtube, Netflix, Amazon and devices only to finally realize that my idea of what's suitable doesn't have an equivalent rating. There are so many safe for any age videos that have a bunch of kids with the worst, most cynical attitudes and no respect for authority and then wholesome shows with "intense emotion" or whatever that get rated tv-14. So I download everything and put it on a USB hard drive hooked to a media hub.
- Nition 9y ago
  I've got an Intel NUC I could do this with. Is there a video player app for iOS that kids could use (i.e. Interface isn't super complex), that'd play remote media? Edit: Looked into this myself just now. VLC Streamer looks decent, as does Infuse by Firecore.
  - j_s 9y ago
    Safari should work well enough with a webserver file listing of MP4s. You could drag an icon to the desktop for an HTML page with thumbnails if it was necessary to get fancy.
  - nathancahill 9y ago
    Also check out Plex Server. It's awesome. The management side is particularly well done.
    - Nition 9y ago
      Thanks, will do.
  - ballenf 9y ago
    VLC also has a great iOS app that can stream and/or download from a desktop running the companion app.
heroprotagonist 9y ago
I haven't tried it, but it should be possible to MITM SSL for your own machines since you have control over trusted certificate authorities. There might be a better article if you search deeper than I did to come up with a quick link, but here: https://blog.heckel.xyz/2013/07/01/how-to-use-mitmproxy-to-read-and-modify-https-traffic-of-your-phone/ https://blog.heckel.xyz/2013/07/01/how-to-use-mitmproxy-to-r...
- zo1 9y ago
  Looks like a very nice find! I'll definitely be having a look at it, thank you.
- cjbprime 9y ago
  I haven't tried it either, but many big name sites use certificate pinning to avoid the attacking form of this MITM.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    A manually trusted cert overrides pinning, it's only protecting against certs signed by another of the default installed certs (otherwise Google and others simply wouldn't work in many corporate environments).
dredmorbius 9y ago
The inability to blacklist channels is a major PITA. The Power of Block is powerful, and denial of it a major Internet dysfunction. I do believe you can hack at Squid to intercept HTTPS and terminate if for you, as well as run filtering (Squidguard), also possibly Dansguardian. Though I've not fully researched this yet. http://squidguard.org http://squidguard.org http://www.squid-cache.org http://www.squid-cache.org
- fiddlerwoaroof 9y ago
  HSTS would probably be an issue, although you could configure squid/etc. to strip those headers.

jerf 9y ago

"Are you always there with them when they're on YouTube," That one. They currently have no independent access to YouTube. (Well... technically if they knew what buttons to push where they do. I'm not using high-tech to block them. But they don't know and I'm not teaching them yet.) Even a few years ago I might have considered this a bit much. But since "Elsa-gate" my mind on that has been changed. I know it's not just a weird conspiracy theory or something because I've even seen a couple of them pop up in my "related videos" list myself, and I don't really have a viewing profile that looks like a kids profile. (The reason why Elsa-gate is happening may be conspiracy theory related, but the brute fact that it is a thing is something I've seen first hand in my own feeds.) The increasingly aggressive targeting behavior across the Internet is I think something not to be taken lightly. Unfortunately we're going to have to raise our children to deal with it, but my considered opinion is that the best solution before the teen age years is to just cut it off entirely. It is not as if we are leaving them adrift, the only ones without tech in an increasingly technical world; my kids play Minecraft, they've seen enough of the current YouTube videos that they can discuss them at school, their school is using technology in a halfway sensible manner so the nine-year old can already type and the six-year-old is on the way. It's only certain segments of the Internet that they are better off just locked away from. Heck, it's not even terribly hypocritical of me... I lock myself away from those very same segments for the very same reason! I use uBlock origin pretty extensively, and whenever I see one of those bullshit Taboola blocks, I'm actively annoyed that they are so tuned that I find myself wanting to click through myself. (I'll know I've gone senile when I no longer can resist it.) I'm not magically immune to this crap, and I know it, so I avoid it. I rely on my own discipline to do it. But relying on a pre-teen's discipline is probably not a good plan.