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I believe there is a technical solution to this that does not involve sanitizing the whole Internet to the level of broadcast TV (good luck with that). A "Chil

I believe there is a technical solution to this that does not involve sanitizing the whole Internet to the level of broadcast TV (good luck with that). A "Child mode" flag would be set system wide when the device is configured by the parent to be used by a child. This should enforce a top down policy that only allows installing child safe apps or apps that propagate and enforce a similar policy. For example, Chrome would be installed but would only allow access to sites that respect the child safe flag. Youtube would load but only run videos and suggestions form a carefully curated set of publishers that respect the age. Etcetera. Compared with previous approaches that failed due to lack of adoption (RASCi, ICRA) this system would provide a strong incentive for app and site owners to properly support the age flag, else they are simply invisible in the children market. A strong initial effort would be required from Google/Microsoft to bootstrap the initial whitelists.

prepend 8y ago
This approach is contrary to youtube’s Business model. They’d rather just block kids. Which makes kids (and parents) just pretend to be 18. Goog just needs to give up and partner with pbs or something to make kids videos a charity.
- matthewrudy 8y ago
  There already is a YouTube Kids that has a similar set of features. https://www.youtube.com/yt/kids/ https://www.youtube.com/yt/kids/
  - acqq 8y ago
    And the "weird" videos from the article seem to still exist there too, the way I understand the article (I haven't checked myself, it was disturbing experience the last time).
  - prepend 8y ago
    This tool claims to have those features, but does not. The article covers this. It’s actually kind of worse, because it lulls parents into thinking it’s safe. And it’s even harder to police since adults never use it and the UI is different than the YouTube parents expect.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      Yes. We found our two year old had found some pretty...strange YouTube Kids videos on her iPad, so we nuked YT Kids and only gave them PBS/Sesame Street.
  - InternetOfStuff 8y ago
    I've tried it, and found it to be worthless.
Hello71 8y ago
except, YouTube Kids already exists, and the whole point of the NYT article was that it's not working.
- detaro 8y ago
  Because it wasn't made the way the parent suggests, but relied on algorithms trying to identify appropriate content and after-the-fact moderation in case of complaints.
- toast0 8y ago
  As a parent of a young child, what I want is a very limited list of videos; not the vast wastes of content that is YouTube. Marble run videos ok. Crazy Russian science guy, mostly ok, as long as it's not too pyromaniac or alcohol. Thoughtful Minecraft videos ok, annoying kids playing terrible games and freaking out about nothing, no thanks. YouTube kids was totally worthless. Either you turn off search and only see featured videos which nobody wants to watch, or you enable search and basically everything is there, because it only blocks a few categories.
s73v3r_ 8y ago
The problem isn't technical at all. In fact, the problem stems from trying to use technology to replace humans. The problem comes because the thing that your entire proposal rests on, curation, isn't being done.
- cornholio 8y ago
  That's my point: don't try to do content curation, pass it down to the next level. A limited number of manually vetted publishers should have access to the kids sections, and that access should be a very valuable asset which they lose when publishing bad content; as opposed to a burner Youtube account anyone can setup in minutes.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    Fine, lets say Google does that. Then they're blamed for allowing a media oligopoly form, whilst ignoring small content producers. We're seeing this play out with the demonitazation of popular vid creators. Long story short, with the public, damned if you, and damned if you don't.
    - jakobegger 8y ago
      Nobody would complain if Youtube offered a curated channel with guaranteed kid safe videos. If I type "Peppa Pig", I want the official genuine Peppa Pig, not some stupid knockoff. The problem is that Youtube wants to show you an endless stream of content, and they never ever want to show you an empty search result. So they show you sketchy videos uploaded by bots with no quality control, and their stupid algorithms somehow manage to always put the fake stuff next to the real stuff. And to make it clear: Nobody is requesting that Google should block questionable videos. They just shouldn't shove them in your face like they do now.
      - s73v3r_ 8y ago
        To make it clear: People are very much requesting that Google block questionable videos on their Kids app.
s_kilk 8y ago
> Youtube would load but only run videos and suggestions form a carefully curated set of publishers that respect the age. Isn't Youtubes whole schtick that they don't want to do any curation, but instead want to just turn the algorithms loose on the firehose of data that's being uploaded and recommend whatever the algorithm spits out? Pivoting to human curation from there sounds like a really difficult task for them.
- alkonaut 8y ago
  They do SOME curation. I just need a flag that lets me filter out the 99.9% that isn't curated. It's either that or I won't use Youtube (or rather, my kids won't). So it's definitely in their interest to curate. They could whitelist a large number of content providers, and just rely on their judgement for this curated platform.
drblast 8y ago
This could work; whitelisting is a far better and easier approach to trying to weed out "bad" stuff. By far the best idea I've ever heard was the creation of a .kids TLD that would be essentially what you described. I believe there was a proposal for that that went nowhere.
- fake-name 8y ago
  The problem is who moderates it? Social mores are dramatically different in different places. What if all content was required to meet Saudi Arabia's regressive social moores? Or the disconnect between the US when it comes to nudity and violence? A moderated community can work, but it has to be much, much more granular, and the effort to achieve that kind of granularity is basically not feasable from an economic standpoint.
  - drblast 8y ago
    There are various voluntary ratings associations in existence, focused on their own version of "acceptable." Commonsensemedia is a good example, they have a US-centric Christian bent that doesn't agree with my own, but for the most part their information about movies and TV for kids is useful to me when deciding what to show my kids. So there seems to be a treasure trove of voluntarily produced data on content by various groups on one side, and a desire to automate applying those ratings to my kids in a default whitelist then allow-by-exception model. If it were technologically possible, I'd even be thrilled to have a default whitelist created by the parents who are my Facebook contacts. We do that manually today. "Hey, have you seen The Incredibles? Is it too scary for my three year old?" Anything that allowed parents to do that, and that worked in a widespread way, would be adopted immediately and would probably be worth a subscription fee.
tootie 8y ago
Google Family Link does exactly this. App installs require parental approval and browsing is filtered.

prepend 8y ago

This approach is contrary to youtube’s Business model. They’d rather just block kids. Which makes kids (and parents) just pretend to be 18. Goog just needs to give up and partner with pbs or something to make kids videos a charity.

matthewrudy 8y ago
There already is a YouTube Kids that has a similar set of features. https://www.youtube.com/yt/kids/ https://www.youtube.com/yt/kids/
- acqq 8y ago
  And the "weird" videos from the article seem to still exist there too, the way I understand the article (I haven't checked myself, it was disturbing experience the last time).
- prepend 8y ago
  This tool claims to have those features, but does not. The article covers this. It’s actually kind of worse, because it lulls parents into thinking it’s safe. And it’s even harder to police since adults never use it and the UI is different than the YouTube parents expect.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Yes. We found our two year old had found some pretty...strange YouTube Kids videos on her iPad, so we nuked YT Kids and only gave them PBS/Sesame Street.
- InternetOfStuff 8y ago
  I've tried it, and found it to be worthless.

Hello71 8y ago

except, YouTube Kids already exists, and the whole point of the NYT article was that it's not working.

detaro 8y ago
Because it wasn't made the way the parent suggests, but relied on algorithms trying to identify appropriate content and after-the-fact moderation in case of complaints.
toast0 8y ago
As a parent of a young child, what I want is a very limited list of videos; not the vast wastes of content that is YouTube. Marble run videos ok. Crazy Russian science guy, mostly ok, as long as it's not too pyromaniac or alcohol. Thoughtful Minecraft videos ok, annoying kids playing terrible games and freaking out about nothing, no thanks. YouTube kids was totally worthless. Either you turn off search and only see featured videos which nobody wants to watch, or you enable search and basically everything is there, because it only blocks a few categories.

s73v3r_ 8y ago

The problem isn't technical at all. In fact, the problem stems from trying to use technology to replace humans. The problem comes because the thing that your entire proposal rests on, curation, isn't being done.

cornholio 8y ago
That's my point: don't try to do content curation, pass it down to the next level. A limited number of manually vetted publishers should have access to the kids sections, and that access should be a very valuable asset which they lose when publishing bad content; as opposed to a burner Youtube account anyone can setup in minutes.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  Fine, lets say Google does that. Then they're blamed for allowing a media oligopoly form, whilst ignoring small content producers. We're seeing this play out with the demonitazation of popular vid creators. Long story short, with the public, damned if you, and damned if you don't.
  - jakobegger 8y ago
    Nobody would complain if Youtube offered a curated channel with guaranteed kid safe videos. If I type "Peppa Pig", I want the official genuine Peppa Pig, not some stupid knockoff. The problem is that Youtube wants to show you an endless stream of content, and they never ever want to show you an empty search result. So they show you sketchy videos uploaded by bots with no quality control, and their stupid algorithms somehow manage to always put the fake stuff next to the real stuff. And to make it clear: Nobody is requesting that Google should block questionable videos. They just shouldn't shove them in your face like they do now.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      To make it clear: People are very much requesting that Google block questionable videos on their Kids app.

s_kilk 8y ago

> Youtube would load but only run videos and suggestions form a carefully curated set of publishers that respect the age. Isn't Youtubes whole schtick that they don't want to do any curation, but instead want to just turn the algorithms loose on the firehose of data that's being uploaded and recommend whatever the algorithm spits out? Pivoting to human curation from there sounds like a really difficult task for them.

alkonaut 8y ago
They do SOME curation. I just need a flag that lets me filter out the 99.9% that isn't curated. It's either that or I won't use Youtube (or rather, my kids won't). So it's definitely in their interest to curate. They could whitelist a large number of content providers, and just rely on their judgement for this curated platform.

drblast 8y ago

This could work; whitelisting is a far better and easier approach to trying to weed out "bad" stuff. By far the best idea I've ever heard was the creation of a .kids TLD that would be essentially what you described. I believe there was a proposal for that that went nowhere.

fake-name 8y ago
The problem is who moderates it? Social mores are dramatically different in different places. What if all content was required to meet Saudi Arabia's regressive social moores? Or the disconnect between the US when it comes to nudity and violence? A moderated community can work, but it has to be much, much more granular, and the effort to achieve that kind of granularity is basically not feasable from an economic standpoint.
- drblast 8y ago
  There are various voluntary ratings associations in existence, focused on their own version of "acceptable." Commonsensemedia is a good example, they have a US-centric Christian bent that doesn't agree with my own, but for the most part their information about movies and TV for kids is useful to me when deciding what to show my kids. So there seems to be a treasure trove of voluntarily produced data on content by various groups on one side, and a desire to automate applying those ratings to my kids in a default whitelist then allow-by-exception model. If it were technologically possible, I'd even be thrilled to have a default whitelist created by the parents who are my Facebook contacts. We do that manually today. "Hey, have you seen The Incredibles? Is it too scary for my three year old?" Anything that allowed parents to do that, and that worked in a widespread way, would be adopted immediately and would probably be worth a subscription fee.

tootie 8y ago

Google Family Link does exactly this. App installs require parental approval and browsing is filtered.