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Think about the depth of human suffering you’re asking to unlock with this request? Millions of YouTube videos get uploaded everyday, at least hundreds or thous

Think about the depth of human suffering you’re asking to unlock with this request? Millions of YouTube videos get uploaded everyday, at least hundreds or thousands of those must be YTKids flagged. A white list of channels as offered now is much better until machine learning backed filtering gets a bit better.

hinkley 7y ago
You're using a lot of words to say that Youtube doesn't have a viable business model. They don't. The cost of providing the service they pretend to provide would greatly exceed the income on that service. Even with the most aggressive advertising one could imagine.
- femiagbabiaka 7y ago
  what? that's a wild strawman, but I think it's instructive -- I think this is actually a blind spot for a lot of techies. Point blank: I don't care if their business model is viable or not, I care about the service they provide to society. the service they provide (video hosting for free for anyone) is incredibly valuable, almost incalculably so for the amount of creation that it has inspired. the fact that kids can see it is just a side effect of the core value, and so they should provide tools for users to help them protect their children from content they don't want to see. But does that mean that they need to hire an ARMY of humans to do that? No, in fact even if they could afford it, that would be terrible!
- anticensor 7y ago
  They might profit if automated modification of videos to insert covert advertising was permitted.
danShumway 7y ago
You don't need to make a whitelist decision on everything though. Youtube Kids doesn't need to be like Facebook, it doesn't need to moderate everything that's posted. You can be highly exclusionary, you can ignore posts by smaller creators. It's fine for Youtube Kids to be a much smaller selection of manually curated videos from specific partners, because Youtube Kids isn't replacing Youtube as a whole. Given that their current solution basically kills ad revenue on those videos anyway, it's not like creators are going to be clamoring to be included on Youtube Kids in the first place. There's no harm in having a subset of Youtube that is highly gatekept, the same way that subsets like Youtube Red were. Go ahead and let Youtube itself stay as a kid-unfriendly, algorithmically moderated wild west with hidden bombs of objectionable content spread around. That doesn't need to be gotten rid of, just have one corner on a separate subdomain that's nice and safe for kids.
- femiagbabiaka 7y ago
  point up this is a great idea, I hope some Youtube Kids PMs are paying attention.
- magicalist 7y ago
  > Go ahead and let Youtube itself stay as a kid-unfriendly, algorithmically moderated wild west with hidden bombs of objectionable content spread around. That's exactly what the FTC fuss was about, though. It's easy to say that until a parent gives their kid access to it and suddenly YouTube is advertising and recommending stuff to a child, which the law doesn't provide a safe harbor from (not for the content uploaders, either, which is going to cause a lot of problems). The FTC guidance was to identify kids instead by the content they were accessing. Hence Google's complaint: https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/12/our-comment-on-coppa.html https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/12/our-comment-... (tl;dr skip to the "Treat adults as adults" section) edit: now I'm confused because your comment below (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21975870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21975870) indicates you already know your idea here isn't going to work for the FTC?
  - danShumway 7y ago
    You're completely correct. A curated Youtube Kids definitely won't work for the FTC, but it would address jedberg's complaint -- that Youtube Kids is basically worthless as long as it's algorithmically populated with shock/troll videos. To be blunt, even the FTC's own proposal isn't going to work for the FTC (at least not to the degree they want) -- it's a bad solution with unintended consequences. I've brought up a few problems, but other people have brought up far more of them. At a certain point, beyond explaining the FTC's policy and showing the problems, it's not really worth spending the time trying to come up with a way to make it work. It's better to come up with solutions that would address the concerns of actual parents, like jedberg. Importantly, the FTC's approach is the opposite of what parents like jedberg need. Parents need a highly curated feed that they can feel safe showing to their kids. The FTC's approach is going to lead to creators erring on the side of labeling too much of their content as kid friendly. It's also going to force Youtube to get more aggressive with its algorithms, which will inaccurate label objectionable content as kid-friendly. Parents needs fewer videos more carefully classified as kid-friendly, and the FTC is making sure that a lot more videos will be carelessly classified as kid-friendly. Like I said below, my assumption based on the FTC comments I've read/watched is that they just haven't thought that far ahead. They're mad about Youtube in general, and they see creators as an easy way to get at Youtube. That's maybe an overly-cynical take on it, but I'm not super-inclined to be charitable to them on this one.

hinkley 7y ago

You're using a lot of words to say that Youtube doesn't have a viable business model. They don't. The cost of providing the service they pretend to provide would greatly exceed the income on that service. Even with the most aggressive advertising one could imagine.

femiagbabiaka 7y ago
what? that's a wild strawman, but I think it's instructive -- I think this is actually a blind spot for a lot of techies. Point blank: I don't care if their business model is viable or not, I care about the service they provide to society. the service they provide (video hosting for free for anyone) is incredibly valuable, almost incalculably so for the amount of creation that it has inspired. the fact that kids can see it is just a side effect of the core value, and so they should provide tools for users to help them protect their children from content they don't want to see. But does that mean that they need to hire an ARMY of humans to do that? No, in fact even if they could afford it, that would be terrible!
anticensor 7y ago
They might profit if automated modification of videos to insert covert advertising was permitted.

danShumway 7y ago

You don't need to make a whitelist decision on everything though. Youtube Kids doesn't need to be like Facebook, it doesn't need to moderate everything that's posted. You can be highly exclusionary, you can ignore posts by smaller creators. It's fine for Youtube Kids to be a much smaller selection of manually curated videos from specific partners, because Youtube Kids isn't replacing Youtube as a whole. Given that their current solution basically kills ad revenue on those videos anyway, it's not like creators are going to be clamoring to be included on Youtube Kids in the first place. There's no harm in having a subset of Youtube that is highly gatekept, the same way that subsets like Youtube Red were. Go ahead and let Youtube itself stay as a kid-unfriendly, algorithmically moderated wild west with hidden bombs of objectionable content spread around. That doesn't need to be gotten rid of, just have one corner on a separate subdomain that's nice and safe for kids.

femiagbabiaka 7y ago
point up this is a great idea, I hope some Youtube Kids PMs are paying attention.
magicalist 7y ago
> Go ahead and let Youtube itself stay as a kid-unfriendly, algorithmically moderated wild west with hidden bombs of objectionable content spread around. That's exactly what the FTC fuss was about, though. It's easy to say that until a parent gives their kid access to it and suddenly YouTube is advertising and recommending stuff to a child, which the law doesn't provide a safe harbor from (not for the content uploaders, either, which is going to cause a lot of problems). The FTC guidance was to identify kids instead by the content they were accessing. Hence Google's complaint: https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/12/our-comment-on-coppa.html https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2019/12/our-comment-... (tl;dr skip to the "Treat adults as adults" section) edit: now I'm confused because your comment below (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21975870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21975870) indicates you already know your idea here isn't going to work for the FTC?
- danShumway 7y ago
  You're completely correct. A curated Youtube Kids definitely won't work for the FTC, but it would address jedberg's complaint -- that Youtube Kids is basically worthless as long as it's algorithmically populated with shock/troll videos. To be blunt, even the FTC's own proposal isn't going to work for the FTC (at least not to the degree they want) -- it's a bad solution with unintended consequences. I've brought up a few problems, but other people have brought up far more of them. At a certain point, beyond explaining the FTC's policy and showing the problems, it's not really worth spending the time trying to come up with a way to make it work. It's better to come up with solutions that would address the concerns of actual parents, like jedberg. Importantly, the FTC's approach is the opposite of what parents like jedberg need. Parents need a highly curated feed that they can feel safe showing to their kids. The FTC's approach is going to lead to creators erring on the side of labeling too much of their content as kid friendly. It's also going to force Youtube to get more aggressive with its algorithms, which will inaccurate label objectionable content as kid-friendly. Parents needs fewer videos more carefully classified as kid-friendly, and the FTC is making sure that a lot more videos will be carelessly classified as kid-friendly. Like I said below, my assumption based on the FTC comments I've read/watched is that they just haven't thought that far ahead. They're mad about Youtube in general, and they see creators as an easy way to get at Youtube. That's maybe an overly-cynical take on it, but I'm not super-inclined to be charitable to them on this one.