5 ms·

You don't even have to watch a political video. I have crap popping up all the time, "Watch this professor get destroyed by <screamer>!" I know youtube is a s

You don't even have to watch a political video. I have crap popping up all the time, "Watch this professor get destroyed by <screamer>!" I know youtube is a shithole and yet it still surprises me. My son's favorite kid's show is only on YouTube so I created a new account, subscribed just to their channel and still inappropriate content shows up. How hard is this? I also can't block it for my daughter because she has school assignments that involve watching YouTube videos. Sooner or later that's going to bite the school in the ass.

bryan0 6y ago
> I also can't block it for my daughter because she has school assignments that involve watching YouTube videos. Our school uses http://www.viewpure.com/ http://www.viewpure.com/ to avoid this. Also, I agree you don't even need to watch a political video to see political garbage on youtube. Last night they showed me some bizarre political conspiracy ad saying Pelosi and Harris are going to invoke the 25th amendment on Biden to make Harris the president. YouTube was promoting this nonsense at the top of the feed.
- mlang23 6y ago
  I regularily see shady ads as well. This is the actual outrage IMO. Before going off and create a corporate censorship network, they should at least apply some "standars" to what they let through on the ad side. But I guess it is all too late. The Circle proofs to be a pretty prophetic book.
  - joelmichael 6y ago
    I subscribe to Youtube Premium. It's handy if you use Youtube a lot and dislike ads.
    - bryan0 6y ago
      I agree but ideally I do not want to log in to youtube.
    - mlang23 6y ago
      Using this threads sidearm to promote YouTube Premium is pretty much beside the point. I wasn't trying to emphasis my particular dislike for ads. In fact, if the ad is haflway decent, or even interesting, I dont mind getting the occassional ad, especially since I see it as a way of supporting the actual channel owners. What I object to, and in particular in the context of this posting, is that I regularily see ads which never would make it through on more local media. Some of these are outright scams. And I wonder, what is the difference between someone spreading "misinformation" on their channel, and someone else paying YouTube to spread "information" which will ultimately be used to scam the user. Also, YouTube has channel which upwards of 1 mio subscribers which only consist of pirated content. I truely wonder how these slip through the cracks.
  - runarberg 6y ago
    I never see ads on YouTube. I think my ad blocker is sufficiently good at blocking them for me. You deserve better then to be shown ads.
    - bryan0 6y ago
      Yes I totally agree. In this case I was using the ios app so ad blockers do not apply and I was also using YT without being logged in. I need to find a better solution for this.
- nineplay 6y ago
  I'm overall sympathetic to the schools and how much work they've had to do to get everyone set up for virtual learning. That said, if I'd been in charge these laptops would be locked down. I'd whitelist only trusted educational site, and I'd tell the teachers that they'd have to find a way to work with those.
Phlogistique 6y ago
I use this extension for Firefox, which does the job pretty well: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remove-youtube-s-suggestions/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remove-youtub...
neilv 6y ago
For curating videos for one's own children, if the catalog isn't changing too often, you might be able to `youtube-dl` the videos, and put the files on kids' devices or your home media device/appliance. I've been using `youtube-dl` successfully for lecture videos on my TV appliance (supposedly to watch while using the stationary bike). An example command line is in a script that grabs the videos from a conference: https://www.neilvandyke.org/racket/download-racketcon-2019-videos.sh https://www.neilvandyke.org/racket/download-racketcon-2019-v... I suppose one could automate the process, with a simple UI to approve or submit a URL for viewing, and then automatically youtube-dl it and make it available to the kids' devices.
- nradov 6y ago
  That doesn't work. My kids are literally being assigned to watch specific YouTube videos on their Chromebooks and then answer questions as part of the ridiculous "distance learning" nonsense that the school district came up with. I can't review and approve each video. And downloaded videos won't be available on Chromebooks.
  - dnadler 6y ago
    If you are up for it, you could host the videos on a computer on your network and serve them with Plex. Plex has a decent web-app for viewing your catalog. Chromebooks should have no problem with that setup provided they can get on the same network as the server.
    - nradov 6y ago
      No the links from school assignments would be broken.
    - ascii234 6y ago
      There's also the added issue that the chromebooks are probably running through a VPN for the district filtering and monitoring. This at least the way my children's district runs things.
nendroid 6y ago
Your kid will be corrupted by society anyway. What's this whole thing about protecting children from the reality of the real world anyway? A bit off topic but a serious question. What's your logical reasoning for blocking the content now. It's just slowing down what he will be able to see (by deliberately going around you) within a couple years. I never understood this with parents.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  You've never understood why parents protect children from things that they will eventually be exposed to as adults? If your goal is to give your children unfiltered access to "reality," parents are entirely unnecessary after birth.
  - lerptime 6y ago
    >You've never understood why parents protect children from things that they will eventually be exposed to as adults? If your goal is to give your children unfiltered access to "reality," parents are entirely unnecessary after birth. Hey I have a different opinion than you. I think you should respect that rather than say parents are unnecessary after birth. That's rude. First off think about it logically. Why indeed do parents have to protect children from things they will not only be exposed to as adults but things they will inevitably seek and successfully expose themselves to BEFORE they become adults. Your job as a parent is to protect your kid from actual harm and to teach your kid and feed your kid and guide your kid. Your optional side job is to protect your kid from "reality" that's your own personal choice and there are actual scientific observations of the result. The podcast below actually illustrates a scientific study on the subject: https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-become-batman https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-be... A part of it actually follows two blind kids with different parents and different parenting choices. One parent chose to protect his blind kid from reality. The other parent gave the blind kid a bike for a birthday present two weeks after the crazy blind kid lost his two front teeth from running into a wall. Do you want to know the end result of sheltering a blind kid versus encouraging one to explore reality? Watch the podcast to find out. Very interesting if your a parent. Let's just say one blind kid (now adult) now walks around the world as if he can see and literally uses echolocation to navigate the world. The other blind kid walks the world as if he's a crippled blind man. Here's another one: https://www.npr.org/2015/01/16/377517810/world-with-no-fear https://www.npr.org/2015/01/16/377517810/world-with-no-fear Also about kids. Talking about how kids today only wander around their homes while kids in the 60s and 70s wander around the whole town by themselves. It's attributed to different parenting styles and fear of exposing kids to the real world. Parents in the 70s were much less fearful about protecting kids from reality. Parents today are scared of everything. But the illogical difference here is that from the 70s to now, crime has actually gone down. Your kids today are more safe than ever before but parents are more restrictive and scared than they ever were before.
greggman3 6y ago
There's a button, "not interested". Click it. My youtube is mostly pretty nice. I get recommendations for cooking videos because I subscribe to and watch a couple of channels. I get recommendations for GDC videos, various programming videos. I mark videos as not interest often. And if there is something It think might give it the wrong idea I often right click and view in an incognito window. Have had very few issues keeping my youtube recommendations relatively clean, and I really enjoy some channels. Souped Up Recipes, Chinese Cooking Demystified, Coding Adventure, Veritasium, Kurzgesagt
- minerjoe 6y ago
  I think you're maybe missing the point, just a bit. The problem isn't that tech savy people can protect themselves, it's that most people can't and won't.
  - scollet 6y ago
    I think they were just offering advice to that particular person. I even forgot there was a 'not interested' option. I just keep good company on YT I guess.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Yeah you can to some pretty dark corners of youtube when you put it on autoplay :)

bryan0 6y ago

> I also can't block it for my daughter because she has school assignments that involve watching YouTube videos. Our school uses http://www.viewpure.com/ http://www.viewpure.com/ to avoid this. Also, I agree you don't even need to watch a political video to see political garbage on youtube. Last night they showed me some bizarre political conspiracy ad saying Pelosi and Harris are going to invoke the 25th amendment on Biden to make Harris the president. YouTube was promoting this nonsense at the top of the feed.

mlang23 6y ago
I regularily see shady ads as well. This is the actual outrage IMO. Before going off and create a corporate censorship network, they should at least apply some "standars" to what they let through on the ad side. But I guess it is all too late. The Circle proofs to be a pretty prophetic book.
- joelmichael 6y ago
  I subscribe to Youtube Premium. It's handy if you use Youtube a lot and dislike ads.
  - bryan0 6y ago
    I agree but ideally I do not want to log in to youtube.
  - mlang23 6y ago
    Using this threads sidearm to promote YouTube Premium is pretty much beside the point. I wasn't trying to emphasis my particular dislike for ads. In fact, if the ad is haflway decent, or even interesting, I dont mind getting the occassional ad, especially since I see it as a way of supporting the actual channel owners. What I object to, and in particular in the context of this posting, is that I regularily see ads which never would make it through on more local media. Some of these are outright scams. And I wonder, what is the difference between someone spreading "misinformation" on their channel, and someone else paying YouTube to spread "information" which will ultimately be used to scam the user. Also, YouTube has channel which upwards of 1 mio subscribers which only consist of pirated content. I truely wonder how these slip through the cracks.
- runarberg 6y ago
  I never see ads on YouTube. I think my ad blocker is sufficiently good at blocking them for me. You deserve better then to be shown ads.
  - bryan0 6y ago
    Yes I totally agree. In this case I was using the ios app so ad blockers do not apply and I was also using YT without being logged in. I need to find a better solution for this.
nineplay 6y ago
I'm overall sympathetic to the schools and how much work they've had to do to get everyone set up for virtual learning. That said, if I'd been in charge these laptops would be locked down. I'd whitelist only trusted educational site, and I'd tell the teachers that they'd have to find a way to work with those.

Phlogistique 6y ago

I use this extension for Firefox, which does the job pretty well: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remove-youtube-s-suggestions/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remove-youtub...

neilv 6y ago

For curating videos for one's own children, if the catalog isn't changing too often, you might be able to `youtube-dl` the videos, and put the files on kids' devices or your home media device/appliance. I've been using `youtube-dl` successfully for lecture videos on my TV appliance (supposedly to watch while using the stationary bike). An example command line is in a script that grabs the videos from a conference: https://www.neilvandyke.org/racket/download-racketcon-2019-videos.sh https://www.neilvandyke.org/racket/download-racketcon-2019-v... I suppose one could automate the process, with a simple UI to approve or submit a URL for viewing, and then automatically youtube-dl it and make it available to the kids' devices.

nradov 6y ago
That doesn't work. My kids are literally being assigned to watch specific YouTube videos on their Chromebooks and then answer questions as part of the ridiculous "distance learning" nonsense that the school district came up with. I can't review and approve each video. And downloaded videos won't be available on Chromebooks.
- dnadler 6y ago
  If you are up for it, you could host the videos on a computer on your network and serve them with Plex. Plex has a decent web-app for viewing your catalog. Chromebooks should have no problem with that setup provided they can get on the same network as the server.
  - nradov 6y ago
    No the links from school assignments would be broken.
  - ascii234 6y ago
    There's also the added issue that the chromebooks are probably running through a VPN for the district filtering and monitoring. This at least the way my children's district runs things.

nendroid 6y ago

Your kid will be corrupted by society anyway. What's this whole thing about protecting children from the reality of the real world anyway? A bit off topic but a serious question. What's your logical reasoning for blocking the content now. It's just slowing down what he will be able to see (by deliberately going around you) within a couple years. I never understood this with parents.

pessimizer 6y ago
You've never understood why parents protect children from things that they will eventually be exposed to as adults? If your goal is to give your children unfiltered access to "reality," parents are entirely unnecessary after birth.
- lerptime 6y ago
  >You've never understood why parents protect children from things that they will eventually be exposed to as adults? If your goal is to give your children unfiltered access to "reality," parents are entirely unnecessary after birth. Hey I have a different opinion than you. I think you should respect that rather than say parents are unnecessary after birth. That's rude. First off think about it logically. Why indeed do parents have to protect children from things they will not only be exposed to as adults but things they will inevitably seek and successfully expose themselves to BEFORE they become adults. Your job as a parent is to protect your kid from actual harm and to teach your kid and feed your kid and guide your kid. Your optional side job is to protect your kid from "reality" that's your own personal choice and there are actual scientific observations of the result. The podcast below actually illustrates a scientific study on the subject: https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-become-batman https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-be... A part of it actually follows two blind kids with different parents and different parenting choices. One parent chose to protect his blind kid from reality. The other parent gave the blind kid a bike for a birthday present two weeks after the crazy blind kid lost his two front teeth from running into a wall. Do you want to know the end result of sheltering a blind kid versus encouraging one to explore reality? Watch the podcast to find out. Very interesting if your a parent. Let's just say one blind kid (now adult) now walks around the world as if he can see and literally uses echolocation to navigate the world. The other blind kid walks the world as if he's a crippled blind man. Here's another one: https://www.npr.org/2015/01/16/377517810/world-with-no-fear https://www.npr.org/2015/01/16/377517810/world-with-no-fear Also about kids. Talking about how kids today only wander around their homes while kids in the 60s and 70s wander around the whole town by themselves. It's attributed to different parenting styles and fear of exposing kids to the real world. Parents in the 70s were much less fearful about protecting kids from reality. Parents today are scared of everything. But the illogical difference here is that from the 70s to now, crime has actually gone down. Your kids today are more safe than ever before but parents are more restrictive and scared than they ever were before.

greggman3 6y ago

There's a button, "not interested". Click it. My youtube is mostly pretty nice. I get recommendations for cooking videos because I subscribe to and watch a couple of channels. I get recommendations for GDC videos, various programming videos. I mark videos as not interest often. And if there is something It think might give it the wrong idea I often right click and view in an incognito window. Have had very few issues keeping my youtube recommendations relatively clean, and I really enjoy some channels. Souped Up Recipes, Chinese Cooking Demystified, Coding Adventure, Veritasium, Kurzgesagt

minerjoe 6y ago
I think you're maybe missing the point, just a bit. The problem isn't that tech savy people can protect themselves, it's that most people can't and won't.
- scollet 6y ago
  I think they were just offering advice to that particular person. I even forgot there was a 'not interested' option. I just keep good company on YT I guess.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

Yeah you can to some pretty dark corners of youtube when you put it on autoplay :)