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I don’t understand why YT a kids isn’t a completely parent controlled thing. I’d like to be able to simply choose the channels that my kids can watch any time,

I don’t understand why YT a kids isn’t a completely parent controlled thing. I’d like to be able to simply choose the channels that my kids can watch any time, and let’s leave it at that. Why does this not exist?

snuxoll 9y ago
I could ask the same question about other services like Netflix, Amazon Freetime, etc. I’m so tired of services completely missing the ball on what I want as a parent, which is really nothing more than presenting my child a locked down profile with access to content I have whitelisted - but everything operates on the curation+blacklist model instead.
innagadadavida 9y ago
This will be awesome, same for Netflix. Another problem to fix is limiting watching to certain times and durations. I wonder if there are third party apps that aggregate across YT and Netflix and has these features in a legal manner.
- jjp 9y ago
  For the time limits you could take a look at Circle, which allows you reasonable control (at an individual level) of when and how long your children are using Netflix etc. And offers some control of what (by classified type) or domain whitelist/blacklist. Don’t think I can block specific urls so can’t achieve whitelist only YouTube.
  - mistermann 9y ago
    I've been looking for a router with good monitoring and control for years, this looks very impressive, thanks! https://meetcircle.com/ https://meetcircle.com/
acct1771 9y ago
You can. You just have to do it "the old fashioned way", aka, spending the time with your kids.
- prophesi 9y ago
  That just turns into helicopter parenting, which causes a lot of problems. You can do both; Spend time with your kids, and let them do their own thing within set constraints.
- jamra 9y ago
  I spend tons of time with my kids. If I need to prepare food or feed my picky daughter, YouTube can be helpful. This kind of shaming doesn’t help and I don’t buy that you can watch your kids 24/7. Besides, have you ever had a bad day and wanted to finish dinner while your child decided to be a bit bratty? It’s not the best choice to put kids in front of screens and I do it very minimally, but this shaming tactic isn’t helpful
  - zaksoup 9y ago
    I've yet to meet a single person* with kids who actually, unironically, says things like "your just have to spend time with your kids, duh" * The few I have met who say these things have full-time live-in nannies so they're not exactly models of "spending time with their kids" either...
  - acct1771 9y ago
    My parents worked multiple jobs, still had the time to make selections of titles to give me - or not. This is not a corporation's job. Multiple streaming services have kid sections, downloading actual files that are the ones you want your child to see, etc. Curating content for your children has never been faster or easier, so...how'd our parents do it?
    - jamra 9y ago
      Your parents had youtube? The internet? Have you seen what kind of bait and switch content is on youtube? It can look like a children's show, but turn out to be something really creepy. If you think it's the job of parents to curate content, that's also fine, but youtube should allow for a feature that lets you whitelist content. It sounds like you had lovely parents, though. Congratulations.
gowld 9y ago
Because in the modern walled garden, all decisions must be made by the benevolent corporation for benefit of the consumer. We're paid to think so you don't have to!
- iamdave 9y ago
  One of my chief complaints about social media once we entered the age of Facebook was "I miss being able to use the platform on my terms". Stop telling me I should check out this, or react to that, or signal my approval to the other just because my friends did. Remember on Myspace how if you wanted the world's ugliest page with marquee animated gifs of a 3D baby dancing across the banner...YOU COULD. Nobody was stopping you. Myspace gave you the canvass, and said "go have fun, add a few friends, talk about concerts". If myspace gave us the canvas and an unlimited selection of paint colors, Facebook gave us a color by numbers coloring book and four pre-approved shades of blue, along with a small static shock whenever a color went over the line. And you know what? As a guy with no kids If it takes parents getting mad at YouTube to finally get some sort of critical mass on giving more control to the end user how they interact with the platform (aside from obvious outliers like malicious/offensive/illegal content), I'm all about it. I wish platforms would realize this. We're glad to use the platforms, just stop trying to herd us into doing it the way you want. Maybe I'm looking at too rosy of an ideal, here though.
Nition 9y ago
There's still a YouTube API right? Good opportunity for a third-party app maybe? I see one YouTube Whitelist app on the Play store already but it's got in-app purchases and just generally doesn't look that great.

snuxoll 9y ago

I could ask the same question about other services like Netflix, Amazon Freetime, etc. I’m so tired of services completely missing the ball on what I want as a parent, which is really nothing more than presenting my child a locked down profile with access to content I have whitelisted - but everything operates on the curation+blacklist model instead.

innagadadavida 9y ago

This will be awesome, same for Netflix. Another problem to fix is limiting watching to certain times and durations. I wonder if there are third party apps that aggregate across YT and Netflix and has these features in a legal manner.

jjp 9y ago
For the time limits you could take a look at Circle, which allows you reasonable control (at an individual level) of when and how long your children are using Netflix etc. And offers some control of what (by classified type) or domain whitelist/blacklist. Don’t think I can block specific urls so can’t achieve whitelist only YouTube.
- mistermann 9y ago
  I've been looking for a router with good monitoring and control for years, this looks very impressive, thanks! https://meetcircle.com/ https://meetcircle.com/

acct1771 9y ago

You can. You just have to do it "the old fashioned way", aka, spending the time with your kids.

prophesi 9y ago
That just turns into helicopter parenting, which causes a lot of problems. You can do both; Spend time with your kids, and let them do their own thing within set constraints.
jamra 9y ago
I spend tons of time with my kids. If I need to prepare food or feed my picky daughter, YouTube can be helpful. This kind of shaming doesn’t help and I don’t buy that you can watch your kids 24/7. Besides, have you ever had a bad day and wanted to finish dinner while your child decided to be a bit bratty? It’s not the best choice to put kids in front of screens and I do it very minimally, but this shaming tactic isn’t helpful
- zaksoup 9y ago
  I've yet to meet a single person* with kids who actually, unironically, says things like "your just have to spend time with your kids, duh" * The few I have met who say these things have full-time live-in nannies so they're not exactly models of "spending time with their kids" either...
- acct1771 9y ago
  My parents worked multiple jobs, still had the time to make selections of titles to give me - or not. This is not a corporation's job. Multiple streaming services have kid sections, downloading actual files that are the ones you want your child to see, etc. Curating content for your children has never been faster or easier, so...how'd our parents do it?
  - jamra 9y ago
    Your parents had youtube? The internet? Have you seen what kind of bait and switch content is on youtube? It can look like a children's show, but turn out to be something really creepy. If you think it's the job of parents to curate content, that's also fine, but youtube should allow for a feature that lets you whitelist content. It sounds like you had lovely parents, though. Congratulations.

gowld 9y ago

Because in the modern walled garden, all decisions must be made by the benevolent corporation for benefit of the consumer. We're paid to think so you don't have to!

iamdave 9y ago
One of my chief complaints about social media once we entered the age of Facebook was "I miss being able to use the platform on my terms". Stop telling me I should check out this, or react to that, or signal my approval to the other just because my friends did. Remember on Myspace how if you wanted the world's ugliest page with marquee animated gifs of a 3D baby dancing across the banner...YOU COULD. Nobody was stopping you. Myspace gave you the canvass, and said "go have fun, add a few friends, talk about concerts". If myspace gave us the canvas and an unlimited selection of paint colors, Facebook gave us a color by numbers coloring book and four pre-approved shades of blue, along with a small static shock whenever a color went over the line. And you know what? As a guy with no kids If it takes parents getting mad at YouTube to finally get some sort of critical mass on giving more control to the end user how they interact with the platform (aside from obvious outliers like malicious/offensive/illegal content), I'm all about it. I wish platforms would realize this. We're glad to use the platforms, just stop trying to herd us into doing it the way you want. Maybe I'm looking at too rosy of an ideal, here though.

Nition 9y ago

There's still a YouTube API right? Good opportunity for a third-party app maybe? I see one YouTube Whitelist app on the Play store already but it's got in-app purchases and just generally doesn't look that great.