5 ms·

The people at Google/Youtube really make it hard for quality content to succeed most of the time and their beloved algorithms mostly just boil down to "If a per

The people at Google/Youtube really make it hard for quality content to succeed most of the time and their beloved algorithms mostly just boil down to "If a person clicks X, bombard them with as much things as close to X as possible from now on". (Also their obsession with "engagement" which translates to outrage, but I hope this is less relevant in Youtube Kids...) The danger for kids also stems from this in my opinion, if the wrong kind of video creeps into autoplay everything goes down the drain FAST with almost no chance to recover for the better by itself. Cheap and almost copied content gets rewarded the most.

spicybright 6y ago
Kids should only be able to view content vetted by a human. Full stop. Too bad it's never going to happen.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dylan604 6y ago
  Historically, that human was called a parent. Parents today have no chance at the on-slaught of content and the delivery mechanisms for it. When I was a kid, there were 3 networks with a handful of UHF channels. Cartoons only ran on Saturday morning, most channels went off the air at midnight, and the TV censors were much more strict with would could be on the air. My parents had it easy. When I became a parent, the internet was still small, and YT wouldn't be a thing for another 10 years. I feel for my kid becoming a parent though, or others dealing with it now.
  - basch 6y ago
    There was also a network level curator like PBS, Nickelodeon or Disney. Are there people/teams making vetted youtube playlists of content that surpasses a certain level of quality? That would be an interesting Kids mode. "Only allow videos from playlists that have been added/sunk to this account." Kind of a middle ground between making Google the content arbitrator and being able to watch every video before your kids do.
    - dylan604 6y ago
      >There was also a network level curator like PBS, Nickelodeon or Disney. That's kind of the point of YT though is to completely bypass the network curation. Nobody has what you want on or won't put your stuff on? Screw 'em! We bring you YouTube. The You was the big deal that bucked the network concept. So no, there's never going to be a human curator for all of YT. If channels want to curate themselves, then they may or may not be rewarded for that with a larger subscriber base.
      - basch 6y ago
        >That's kind of the point of YT though is to completely bypass the network curation. Instead we have algoautoplay. I'm describing opt in playlist producers. Why couldn't there be a level of "playlist curators" who exist not as channels. "Bob puts together really good playlists, whitelist all Bob approved videos." I subscribe to 10 curators and bobs my uncle. I want to follow bob for the videos he suggests not the ones he makes. The idea of a channel curating itself is the anthesis of someone picking the best from many channels. Pop radio run by Taylor Swift would turn into her playing her album on repeat? How is that more useful than the album itself. The evolution of the MTV VJ. It could even have an audio reaction track layered over the top of the playlist that can be toggled on off. They could add intro/outro commentary.
        crtasm 6y ago
        Might break a little once Bob is popular enough to be offered money (or some other reward) for featuring videos they wouldn't otherwise pick. I do think it's a good idea though.
        Phrodo_00 6y ago
        This is actually a brilliant idea and Youtube almost supports it. Channels can have playlists that have any videos, not only their own. All that's missing is to be able to restrict an account to certain playlists. The other part is how to incentivize the creation of the playlists.
  - vkou 6y ago
    > Historically, that human was called a parent. Parents today have no chance at the on-slaught of content and the delivery mechanisms for it. Unless you're letting a tablet, or the television raise your children, it's not because of the onslaught of content. The onslaught of content is nothing new - for the past century, mass media was producing more content than you could ever consume. The problem is that parents aren't putting in the time and energy to curate the content their children consume. (I'm explicitly not going to go into the social reasons why, it's an interesting topic, but not really pertinent to this thread. Some people in this thread are bringing up technical reasons why, which I feel is more pertinent.)
  - hnick 6y ago
    > Historically, that human was called a parent Yes and no. From your own example, the censors and rules made it clear to parents what and when their kids could watch without the parents having to expend too much time and effort to double check everything. In theory, something branded 'YouTube Kids' would fit the same purpose and many parents probably assume it is fine based on their experience with offline media. The problem is there is no strictness or quality control like you mention.
  - Clewza313 6y ago
    Ehh, it's not quite that unidimensional. Kids also used to roam freely around the neighborhood, and find the stash of porn mags in the local hobo camp.
  - nullsense 6y ago
    As a parent now going through this the whole thing I can't help but think of the "worse is better" essay. The conclusion I've come to is that we dove headlong into the promises of "better" technology and that worked for a long time, but since the rise of social media and smartphones we've crossed this threshold where "better is worse". I grew up with a handful of channels and I can't really say it was much of a hardship. When I compare to the endless doomscrolling of YouTube for yet another Minecraft video I see my boy doing I can't help but feel like the algorithms have got his mind in a vice already. The technology seems better in every way, but the negatives are also amplified.
  - fogihujy 6y ago
    It was a slippery slope. I'd like to claim that if parents spent less time staring at a screen in front of their children, there would also be less children staring at mind-numbing content online. The fact is, however, that many simply dump their kids in front of Youtube just so that they can spend time on social media themselves. In other words: If we want to break kids' screen addictions then we need to start with their parents.
- ensignavenger 6y ago
  There are those who would say that that human should be a parental unit.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    Those who are a parent would say that those who do have no idea.
    - ensignavenger 6y ago
      That would depend a lot on the parent. I know plenty of parents who would agree.
- faitswulff 6y ago
  YouTube Kids has a setting for that, at least: https://www.techlicious.com/blog/curated-content-youtube-kids/ https://www.techlicious.com/blog/curated-content-youtube-kid...
  - bgilly 6y ago
    I’m unable to find that setting in the YouTube Kids app on my iPhone. Is it on yours?
jariel 6y ago
It's uncanny how bad the major players are at this. You can click here [1] to see your supposed 'interests'. It's uncannily bad. 'Combat Sports' , 'Boating', 'Construction and Power Tools' and 'Cricket' (!) apparently among interests they think I haven though they are subjects which don't cross my mind. I don't think I've even thought about 'Cricket' other than for them to tell me it's 'an interest'. [1] https://adssettings.google.com/u/0/authenticated https://adssettings.google.com/u/0/authenticated
- banana_giraffe 6y ago
  Hah. For a job I had for a while I had to routinely search for movie names to make sure I got the spelling correct. Now google thinks I enjoy all the genres known.
- ASalazarMX 6y ago
  I recently looked up car tires because mine were old and leaking air. It was a single day, but now it says I'm interested in "cars" and "car tires". No wonder why Seat started insistingly showing ads on my phone. It also deduced correctly that I'm married with no kids, while my work account is married with teenage kids, probably from watching videos linked here in HN.
- hnick 6y ago
  Jeez how many do people usually have? There are just shy of 200 'interests' in my list. I'm not particularly interested in helping them out by editing it though. From what I saw the list is accurate in that it doesn't really contain anything I hate, but it's inaccurate since it's only a broken impression of all the things I like with many gaps.
- reader_mode 6y ago
  I have : Parental Status : Not A Parent And then : Parenting Nursery & Playroom Babies & Toddlers Baby & Toddler Toys Baby Care & Hygiene Baby Strollers & Transport Child Care Children's Clothing An interesting algorithm you have there :D
- nullsense 6y ago
basch 6y ago
All "customized for you"/"things youll like" algorithms are more about trapping you in a frozen past than expanding your horizons. Everyone together trains the algo what "more of the same looks like" and thats what it regurgitates. Every time I read a marketing copy about AI, that's what I think of first, is that someone literally designed a new mouse trap. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7... "But taken together the cumulative effect is that of a giant refrigerator that freezes us, and those who govern us, into a state of immobility, perpetually repeating the past and terrified of change and the future." That article makes the same argument about index funds and hedge funds, the Blackrocks and Vanguards of the world. Minimizing risk means trapping the world in a way that it never has a chance to gamble on changing. "It has within its memory a vast history of the past 50 years - not just financial - but all kinds of events. What it does is constantly take things that happen in the present day and compares them to events in the past. Out of the millions and millions of correlations - Aladdin then spots possible disasters - possible futures - and moves the investments to avoid that future happening. I can't over-emphasise how powerful Blackrock's system is in shaping the world - it's more powerful in some respects than traditional politics. And it raises really important questions. Because its aim is to not change the world - but to keep it stable. Preventing any development thats too risky. And when you are moving $11 trillion around to do that -it is a really important new force." Personalized tailored experiences prevent the future by making us relive the past.
- charcircuit 6y ago
  It's not though. For example I used to be in hobby X, so I watched a lot of X based videos. As I fell out of the hobby I stopped watching X videos, so Youtube stopped recommending them to me unless it thinks there is a REALLY good X based video it thinks I would like. YouTube also lets you easily add to your interests by directly searching for and watching videos about them. There is also the slow way where you have interest X and YouTube recommends you a video about Y since it noticed that it preformed well for other people interested in X. I would never consider YouTube as trapping me as a frozen past as what kinds of videos it recommends are constantly changing as my interests in real life change.
ripply 6y ago
I've noticed that its basically impossible for Youtube to recommend me anything outside the bubble it has assigned me. I end up using guest accounts to find new content but even that doesn't work too well (the guest account also ends up in its own bubble) and generally only recommends the most popular videos in a region so I even switch regions sometimes.
- tasssko 6y ago
  So true... I don’t do as you do with guest accounts etc i have premium because the only thing i hate more than my bubble is the adverts! I tend to unsubscribe, or tell youtube to stop showing me this.
- dghughes 6y ago
  And lord help you if you accidentally click on some drivel that's suggested. It'll take years of ignoring it before it and similar videos are no longer suggested.
  - _0ffh 6y ago
    I liberally use the "Not interested" and "Don't recommend channel" options in the menu. Works okay for me.
    - hypertele-Xii 6y ago
      These options are literally the only way for me to even get new recommendations. YouTube "helpfully" fills my recommendations with videos I've already watched, videos from channels I'm already subscribed to and watched, its own "mix" playlists of songs I listen to, and totally random "topics" it thinks I'm interested in. I have to "Don't recommend" every channel I subscribe to and "Not interested" every video I click on but don't watch fully, or they completely fill several pages of recommendations. I don't know what happened or when, but it's impossible to discover new content there anymore.
      - bashmelek 6y ago
Spooky23 6y ago
I watched the decline in phases between my oldest nephew’s birth in 2007, my sons in 2011 and my nieces more recently. YouTube is measurably worse, especially for children’s content. There was amazing music and educational stuff in there, and it’s still there. But those creators are gone in the sense that there isn’t a lot of new content as the garbage you describe took over. It’s reflective of the poor leadership of that part of the company. Based on conversations with fellow parents, YouTube is a no-go zone for them. The idiot who got a big bonus for “engagement” targeting kids will be long gone when the brand toxicity kills the growth. Look at Netflix as a comparison of a company with similar product, but who has self-respect. Netflix has a ruthless focus on engagement, but you don’t see the type of vacuous content. Netflix never auto played by 3 year old to a creepy clown hiding in a kids video. If anything, they elevated television in many ways.
charcircuit 6y ago
>really make it hard for quality content to succeed It's the opposite. Quality content goes viral where bad content will stop getting recommended to people. >Cheap and almost copied content gets rewarded the most What gets rewarded the most is entertaining videos. YouTube doesn't care if that video took 10 minutes to make or 10 months. It just sees how good the video is at entertaining people.
- tyree731 6y ago
  You said it yourself, it isn’t quality content that gets rewarded, it’s entertaining content or, more specifically, content that gets you engaged. So it isn’t the opposite, it’s their point exactly.
  - charcircuit 6y ago
    The parent implied that quality content was at a disadvantage by the algorithm when that is just not the case. I believe that quality content is correlated with its entertainment value.

spicybright 6y ago

Kids should only be able to view content vetted by a human. Full stop. Too bad it's never going to happen.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dylan604 6y ago
Historically, that human was called a parent. Parents today have no chance at the on-slaught of content and the delivery mechanisms for it. When I was a kid, there were 3 networks with a handful of UHF channels. Cartoons only ran on Saturday morning, most channels went off the air at midnight, and the TV censors were much more strict with would could be on the air. My parents had it easy. When I became a parent, the internet was still small, and YT wouldn't be a thing for another 10 years. I feel for my kid becoming a parent though, or others dealing with it now.
- basch 6y ago
  There was also a network level curator like PBS, Nickelodeon or Disney. Are there people/teams making vetted youtube playlists of content that surpasses a certain level of quality? That would be an interesting Kids mode. "Only allow videos from playlists that have been added/sunk to this account." Kind of a middle ground between making Google the content arbitrator and being able to watch every video before your kids do.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    >There was also a network level curator like PBS, Nickelodeon or Disney. That's kind of the point of YT though is to completely bypass the network curation. Nobody has what you want on or won't put your stuff on? Screw 'em! We bring you YouTube. The You was the big deal that bucked the network concept. So no, there's never going to be a human curator for all of YT. If channels want to curate themselves, then they may or may not be rewarded for that with a larger subscriber base.
    - basch 6y ago
      >That's kind of the point of YT though is to completely bypass the network curation. Instead we have algoautoplay. I'm describing opt in playlist producers. Why couldn't there be a level of "playlist curators" who exist not as channels. "Bob puts together really good playlists, whitelist all Bob approved videos." I subscribe to 10 curators and bobs my uncle. I want to follow bob for the videos he suggests not the ones he makes. The idea of a channel curating itself is the anthesis of someone picking the best from many channels. Pop radio run by Taylor Swift would turn into her playing her album on repeat? How is that more useful than the album itself. The evolution of the MTV VJ. It could even have an audio reaction track layered over the top of the playlist that can be toggled on off. They could add intro/outro commentary.
      - crtasm 6y ago
        Might break a little once Bob is popular enough to be offered money (or some other reward) for featuring videos they wouldn't otherwise pick. I do think it's a good idea though.
      - Phrodo_00 6y ago
        This is actually a brilliant idea and Youtube almost supports it. Channels can have playlists that have any videos, not only their own. All that's missing is to be able to restrict an account to certain playlists. The other part is how to incentivize the creation of the playlists.
- vkou 6y ago
  > Historically, that human was called a parent. Parents today have no chance at the on-slaught of content and the delivery mechanisms for it. Unless you're letting a tablet, or the television raise your children, it's not because of the onslaught of content. The onslaught of content is nothing new - for the past century, mass media was producing more content than you could ever consume. The problem is that parents aren't putting in the time and energy to curate the content their children consume. (I'm explicitly not going to go into the social reasons why, it's an interesting topic, but not really pertinent to this thread. Some people in this thread are bringing up technical reasons why, which I feel is more pertinent.)
- hnick 6y ago
  > Historically, that human was called a parent Yes and no. From your own example, the censors and rules made it clear to parents what and when their kids could watch without the parents having to expend too much time and effort to double check everything. In theory, something branded 'YouTube Kids' would fit the same purpose and many parents probably assume it is fine based on their experience with offline media. The problem is there is no strictness or quality control like you mention.
- Clewza313 6y ago
  Ehh, it's not quite that unidimensional. Kids also used to roam freely around the neighborhood, and find the stash of porn mags in the local hobo camp.
- nullsense 6y ago
  As a parent now going through this the whole thing I can't help but think of the "worse is better" essay. The conclusion I've come to is that we dove headlong into the promises of "better" technology and that worked for a long time, but since the rise of social media and smartphones we've crossed this threshold where "better is worse". I grew up with a handful of channels and I can't really say it was much of a hardship. When I compare to the endless doomscrolling of YouTube for yet another Minecraft video I see my boy doing I can't help but feel like the algorithms have got his mind in a vice already. The technology seems better in every way, but the negatives are also amplified.
- fogihujy 6y ago
  It was a slippery slope. I'd like to claim that if parents spent less time staring at a screen in front of their children, there would also be less children staring at mind-numbing content online. The fact is, however, that many simply dump their kids in front of Youtube just so that they can spend time on social media themselves. In other words: If we want to break kids' screen addictions then we need to start with their parents.
ensignavenger 6y ago
There are those who would say that that human should be a parental unit.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Those who are a parent would say that those who do have no idea.
  - ensignavenger 6y ago
    That would depend a lot on the parent. I know plenty of parents who would agree.
faitswulff 6y ago
YouTube Kids has a setting for that, at least: https://www.techlicious.com/blog/curated-content-youtube-kids/ https://www.techlicious.com/blog/curated-content-youtube-kid...
- bgilly 6y ago
  I’m unable to find that setting in the YouTube Kids app on my iPhone. Is it on yours?

jariel 6y ago

It's uncanny how bad the major players are at this. You can click here [1] to see your supposed 'interests'. It's uncannily bad. 'Combat Sports' , 'Boating', 'Construction and Power Tools' and 'Cricket' (!) apparently among interests they think I haven though they are subjects which don't cross my mind. I don't think I've even thought about 'Cricket' other than for them to tell me it's 'an interest'. [1] https://adssettings.google.com/u/0/authenticated https://adssettings.google.com/u/0/authenticated

banana_giraffe 6y ago
Hah. For a job I had for a while I had to routinely search for movie names to make sure I got the spelling correct. Now google thinks I enjoy all the genres known.
ASalazarMX 6y ago
I recently looked up car tires because mine were old and leaking air. It was a single day, but now it says I'm interested in "cars" and "car tires". No wonder why Seat started insistingly showing ads on my phone. It also deduced correctly that I'm married with no kids, while my work account is married with teenage kids, probably from watching videos linked here in HN.
hnick 6y ago
Jeez how many do people usually have? There are just shy of 200 'interests' in my list. I'm not particularly interested in helping them out by editing it though. From what I saw the list is accurate in that it doesn't really contain anything I hate, but it's inaccurate since it's only a broken impression of all the things I like with many gaps.
reader_mode 6y ago
I have : Parental Status : Not A Parent And then : Parenting Nursery & Playroom Babies & Toddlers Baby & Toddler Toys Baby Care & Hygiene Baby Strollers & Transport Child Care Children's Clothing An interesting algorithm you have there :D
nullsense 6y ago

basch 6y ago

All "customized for you"/"things youll like" algorithms are more about trapping you in a frozen past than expanding your horizons. Everyone together trains the algo what "more of the same looks like" and thats what it regurgitates. Every time I read a marketing copy about AI, that's what I think of first, is that someone literally designed a new mouse trap. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7... "But taken together the cumulative effect is that of a giant refrigerator that freezes us, and those who govern us, into a state of immobility, perpetually repeating the past and terrified of change and the future." That article makes the same argument about index funds and hedge funds, the Blackrocks and Vanguards of the world. Minimizing risk means trapping the world in a way that it never has a chance to gamble on changing. "It has within its memory a vast history of the past 50 years - not just financial - but all kinds of events. What it does is constantly take things that happen in the present day and compares them to events in the past. Out of the millions and millions of correlations - Aladdin then spots possible disasters - possible futures - and moves the investments to avoid that future happening. I can't over-emphasise how powerful Blackrock's system is in shaping the world - it's more powerful in some respects than traditional politics. And it raises really important questions. Because its aim is to not change the world - but to keep it stable. Preventing any development thats too risky. And when you are moving $11 trillion around to do that -it is a really important new force." Personalized tailored experiences prevent the future by making us relive the past.

charcircuit 6y ago
It's not though. For example I used to be in hobby X, so I watched a lot of X based videos. As I fell out of the hobby I stopped watching X videos, so Youtube stopped recommending them to me unless it thinks there is a REALLY good X based video it thinks I would like. YouTube also lets you easily add to your interests by directly searching for and watching videos about them. There is also the slow way where you have interest X and YouTube recommends you a video about Y since it noticed that it preformed well for other people interested in X. I would never consider YouTube as trapping me as a frozen past as what kinds of videos it recommends are constantly changing as my interests in real life change.

ripply 6y ago

I've noticed that its basically impossible for Youtube to recommend me anything outside the bubble it has assigned me. I end up using guest accounts to find new content but even that doesn't work too well (the guest account also ends up in its own bubble) and generally only recommends the most popular videos in a region so I even switch regions sometimes.

tasssko 6y ago
So true... I don’t do as you do with guest accounts etc i have premium because the only thing i hate more than my bubble is the adverts! I tend to unsubscribe, or tell youtube to stop showing me this.
dghughes 6y ago
And lord help you if you accidentally click on some drivel that's suggested. It'll take years of ignoring it before it and similar videos are no longer suggested.
- _0ffh 6y ago
  I liberally use the "Not interested" and "Don't recommend channel" options in the menu. Works okay for me.
  - hypertele-Xii 6y ago
    These options are literally the only way for me to even get new recommendations. YouTube "helpfully" fills my recommendations with videos I've already watched, videos from channels I'm already subscribed to and watched, its own "mix" playlists of songs I listen to, and totally random "topics" it thinks I'm interested in. I have to "Don't recommend" every channel I subscribe to and "Not interested" every video I click on but don't watch fully, or they completely fill several pages of recommendations. I don't know what happened or when, but it's impossible to discover new content there anymore.
    - bashmelek 6y ago

Spooky23 6y ago

I watched the decline in phases between my oldest nephew’s birth in 2007, my sons in 2011 and my nieces more recently. YouTube is measurably worse, especially for children’s content. There was amazing music and educational stuff in there, and it’s still there. But those creators are gone in the sense that there isn’t a lot of new content as the garbage you describe took over. It’s reflective of the poor leadership of that part of the company. Based on conversations with fellow parents, YouTube is a no-go zone for them. The idiot who got a big bonus for “engagement” targeting kids will be long gone when the brand toxicity kills the growth. Look at Netflix as a comparison of a company with similar product, but who has self-respect. Netflix has a ruthless focus on engagement, but you don’t see the type of vacuous content. Netflix never auto played by 3 year old to a creepy clown hiding in a kids video. If anything, they elevated television in many ways.

charcircuit 6y ago

>really make it hard for quality content to succeed It's the opposite. Quality content goes viral where bad content will stop getting recommended to people. >Cheap and almost copied content gets rewarded the most What gets rewarded the most is entertaining videos. YouTube doesn't care if that video took 10 minutes to make or 10 months. It just sees how good the video is at entertaining people.

tyree731 6y ago
You said it yourself, it isn’t quality content that gets rewarded, it’s entertaining content or, more specifically, content that gets you engaged. So it isn’t the opposite, it’s their point exactly.
- charcircuit 6y ago
  The parent implied that quality content was at a disadvantage by the algorithm when that is just not the case. I believe that quality content is correlated with its entertainment value.