7 ms·

There is a special place in hell for the YouTube product people: Youtube Kids

70 points by devrimco 5y ago

canadianfella 5y ago
Edutainment? Really?
mox1 5y ago
Did I miss something? We have a paid Youtube subscription and the Youtube kids Ipad application. I have it set to show only the channels or videos I have approved. I deleted everything it started with, and whitelisted 10 or so channels that I reviewed. I monitor my kids pretty closely, I haven't seen any "extra" videos ever show up....
- stolenmerch 5y ago
  Same here. We are pretty liberal with our child and YouTube yet keep tabs on what he watches. We use YouTube kids and the restrictions on normal paid YouTube and haven't had a problem yet. edit: I see, we're in the U.S.
- devrimco 5y ago
  We also have a paid Youtube subscription and the Youtube kids Ipad application. And these options that you mentioned does not exist, in any other country than US I guess, are you in US? Plus other things that I mentioned like that "you can not filter or sort or limit based on your subscriptions" is still the same I guess.
  - mox1 5y ago
    Yep I am in the US. The "whitelisting" option wasn't exactly easy to find. You have to login to the kids app as an adult, setup a special kid profile, activate that profile, THEN whitelist. I remember getting pretty frustrated at how complicated it was, but I eventually got it.
    - lancefisher 5y ago
      Thanks for this! I didn’t even know it existed. I’ve been frustrated that I can’t add my kids to YT premium since their emails are at my custom domain hosted by g-suite. This feature is worth the hassle of setting up gmail accounts and figuring out whitelisting. They have just been sticking to “approved” channels on the honor system which works pretty well, but it’s not perfect.
    - devrimco 5y ago
      you've the right to be frustrated, as it's also shame that they made it complicated and this hard to find for the US version of the app.
alvarlagerlof 5y ago
I can't read this on my phone.
- devrimco 5y ago
  really? what's the phone? as its readable on an old android..
  - jdefelice 5y ago
    I think the person above is referring to the text being very small on a mobile device. The font size is set to 2.5vw which renders the text as 9.375px on a device width of 375px.
    - devrimco 5y ago
      thank you so much. I'll check.
marstall 5y ago
agreed, that's why we don't let our kid use YouTube at all
mokarma 5y ago
Personally I just use Safe Vision (https://safe.vision/ https://safe.vision/) to filter down to specific Channels on my kids Devices. It uses Youtube under the hood, but has a parental control layer on top of it.
- devrimco 5y ago
  thank you, this I'll definitely try. there were several applications like this I tried before, that only add the features that youtube do not give, and in the shortest period of time gets buried due to api-call restrictions, api pay-walls and more, if your app is ever popular..
cityzen 5y ago
Google is an advertising company. They own YouTube. This is the way.
chuckee 5y ago
> But it definitely feels like Youtube just wants dump its entire garbage all over you (via algorithm suggestions) even if you have premium paid accounts. Reminds me of danegeld. Don't feed the beast.
rfwhyte 5y ago
Sounds like the author is just frustrated he can't offload his parental responsibilities onto YouTube. You are your child's parent. Not YouTube. If you want to control what you child watches, its on you to figure that out, not for YouTube to do it for you. If you don't like the controls YouTube provides, don't use it. Or better yet be an actual functioning parent and don't just plop your kid down in front of screen and expect it to parent for you. Play with your kid. Do activities with them. There are near limitless other far more healthy ways a kid could be spending their time other than watching YouTube, but that stuff takes time and attention, so rather than spend that time and attention on their actual child, the author would rather spend it writing whiny blog posts.
- xg15 5y ago
  > You are your child's parent. Not YouTube. If you want to control what you child watches, its on you to figure that out, not for YouTube to do it for you. This is all well and good up to the point where YouTube starts to actively undermine the parent's efforts. Then it becomes "it's your fault for not defending yourself" bully logic. I believe this is what the author was complaining about. > If you don't like the controls YouTube provides, don't use it. Or better yet be an actual functioning parent and don't just plop your kid down in front of screen and expect it to parent for you. So you're implying kids shouldn't use YouTube at all? This seems both overly broad and impractical. Depending on the age of the child, it might not even be possible, e.g. if watching a video is required for school. > Play with your kid. Do activities with them. There are near limitless other far more healthy ways a kid could be spending their time other than watching YouTube So you're agreeing that YouTube Kids as a product shouldn't exist?
- aaomidi 5y ago
  > Sounds like the author is just frustrated he can't offload his parental responsibilities onto YouTube. So, they can't call out companies for being shit? Being able to pick videos from channels you subscribe to is an accessibility issue, not even a "parent for me" issue. Accessibility has a lot of forms, one of them is the inability to self-regulate and self-control when there are external factors. It's not "unreasonable" to ask YouTube to provide accessibility features like this. It is, however, unreasonable to victim blame people on these websites.
saganus 5y ago
A bit off-topic but, does anyone have an explanation of why you can't save a video marked for kids, into a playlist? I've encountered videos that aren't really "for kids", but are marked as so for whatever reason and when I click on "save" (to playlist) I get an error saying that I can't do that. That does not make any sense to me...but perhaps I'm missing something?
- devrimco 5y ago
  yes! this is also a great point. YOU CAN NOT MAKE A PLAYLIST OF KID SONGS FOR YOUR CHILD ON YOUTUBE. Do you see how weird this looks?
- chrisjc 5y ago
  It's very strange and there was in the past some garbled youtube language about why you can't. I read it and still didn't understand what it was trying to convey. While you can't make playlists personally, "kid playlists" do show up when you search and my experiences have been disturbing whenever i try any. The playlist starts with a video or two that you were probably searching for originally. You step away to unload the dishwasher or take care of the laundry while the little one continues to watch. Then all of a sudden an acid-trip, parody version of one of the previous videos kicks in with jarring effects, questionable and suggestive content and lyrics. But it never quite crosses a line that would get it kicked off of youtube. Viewed alone it might come off as funny to an adult or even teenager. How and why were the users of these playlists able to add/mix kids content with this other garbage and yet I can't make a private playlist with personally curated content? I will never allow my kid to watch youtube unless i'm picking personally previewed content. Edit: just to be clear these "kids playlists" do not contain content uploaded by the same user that created the playlist. Edit2: I am (we are) also premium users.
  - saganus 5y ago
    Yeah, I remember reading a lot about those playlists, and I understasnd that can be pretty disturbing or upsetting if you as a parent assume that a playlist is "safe". However if YT already has the ability to mark videos as for kids-only, I have no idea why wouldn't they be able to restrict playlists that contain even a single video that is not kids-only. I.e. if you want to have a YT Kids' playlist, then all videos need to be YT Kids. But the other way around (i.e. a regular playlist with some YT Kids videos) seems irrational.
tomjuggler 5y ago
No, my kid does not get access to YouTube, I download videos with Freetube or NewPipe and he watches them offline. Unfortunately there really isn't anywhere else with the amount of content (good and bad)

70 points by devrimco 5y ago

Edutainment? Really?

mox1 5y ago

Did I miss something? We have a paid Youtube subscription and the Youtube kids Ipad application. I have it set to show only the channels or videos I have approved. I deleted everything it started with, and whitelisted 10 or so channels that I reviewed. I monitor my kids pretty closely, I haven't seen any "extra" videos ever show up....

stolenmerch 5y ago
Same here. We are pretty liberal with our child and YouTube yet keep tabs on what he watches. We use YouTube kids and the restrictions on normal paid YouTube and haven't had a problem yet. edit: I see, we're in the U.S.
devrimco 5y ago
We also have a paid Youtube subscription and the Youtube kids Ipad application. And these options that you mentioned does not exist, in any other country than US I guess, are you in US? Plus other things that I mentioned like that "you can not filter or sort or limit based on your subscriptions" is still the same I guess.
- mox1 5y ago
  Yep I am in the US. The "whitelisting" option wasn't exactly easy to find. You have to login to the kids app as an adult, setup a special kid profile, activate that profile, THEN whitelist. I remember getting pretty frustrated at how complicated it was, but I eventually got it.
  - lancefisher 5y ago
    Thanks for this! I didn’t even know it existed. I’ve been frustrated that I can’t add my kids to YT premium since their emails are at my custom domain hosted by g-suite. This feature is worth the hassle of setting up gmail accounts and figuring out whitelisting. They have just been sticking to “approved” channels on the honor system which works pretty well, but it’s not perfect.
  - devrimco 5y ago
    you've the right to be frustrated, as it's also shame that they made it complicated and this hard to find for the US version of the app.

alvarlagerlof 5y ago

I can't read this on my phone.

devrimco 5y ago
really? what's the phone? as its readable on an old android..
- jdefelice 5y ago
  I think the person above is referring to the text being very small on a mobile device. The font size is set to 2.5vw which renders the text as 9.375px on a device width of 375px.
  - devrimco 5y ago
    thank you so much. I'll check.

marstall 5y ago

agreed, that's why we don't let our kid use YouTube at all

mokarma 5y ago

Personally I just use Safe Vision (https://safe.vision/ https://safe.vision/) to filter down to specific Channels on my kids Devices. It uses Youtube under the hood, but has a parental control layer on top of it.

devrimco 5y ago
thank you, this I'll definitely try. there were several applications like this I tried before, that only add the features that youtube do not give, and in the shortest period of time gets buried due to api-call restrictions, api pay-walls and more, if your app is ever popular..

cityzen 5y ago

Google is an advertising company. They own YouTube. This is the way.

chuckee 5y ago

> But it definitely feels like Youtube just wants dump its entire garbage all over you (via algorithm suggestions) even if you have premium paid accounts. Reminds me of danegeld. Don't feed the beast.

rfwhyte 5y ago

Sounds like the author is just frustrated he can't offload his parental responsibilities onto YouTube. You are your child's parent. Not YouTube. If you want to control what you child watches, its on you to figure that out, not for YouTube to do it for you. If you don't like the controls YouTube provides, don't use it. Or better yet be an actual functioning parent and don't just plop your kid down in front of screen and expect it to parent for you. Play with your kid. Do activities with them. There are near limitless other far more healthy ways a kid could be spending their time other than watching YouTube, but that stuff takes time and attention, so rather than spend that time and attention on their actual child, the author would rather spend it writing whiny blog posts.

xg15 5y ago
> You are your child's parent. Not YouTube. If you want to control what you child watches, its on you to figure that out, not for YouTube to do it for you. This is all well and good up to the point where YouTube starts to actively undermine the parent's efforts. Then it becomes "it's your fault for not defending yourself" bully logic. I believe this is what the author was complaining about. > If you don't like the controls YouTube provides, don't use it. Or better yet be an actual functioning parent and don't just plop your kid down in front of screen and expect it to parent for you. So you're implying kids shouldn't use YouTube at all? This seems both overly broad and impractical. Depending on the age of the child, it might not even be possible, e.g. if watching a video is required for school. > Play with your kid. Do activities with them. There are near limitless other far more healthy ways a kid could be spending their time other than watching YouTube So you're agreeing that YouTube Kids as a product shouldn't exist?
aaomidi 5y ago
> Sounds like the author is just frustrated he can't offload his parental responsibilities onto YouTube. So, they can't call out companies for being shit? Being able to pick videos from channels you subscribe to is an accessibility issue, not even a "parent for me" issue. Accessibility has a lot of forms, one of them is the inability to self-regulate and self-control when there are external factors. It's not "unreasonable" to ask YouTube to provide accessibility features like this. It is, however, unreasonable to victim blame people on these websites.

saganus 5y ago

A bit off-topic but, does anyone have an explanation of why you can't save a video marked for kids, into a playlist? I've encountered videos that aren't really "for kids", but are marked as so for whatever reason and when I click on "save" (to playlist) I get an error saying that I can't do that. That does not make any sense to me...but perhaps I'm missing something?

devrimco 5y ago
yes! this is also a great point. YOU CAN NOT MAKE A PLAYLIST OF KID SONGS FOR YOUR CHILD ON YOUTUBE. Do you see how weird this looks?
chrisjc 5y ago
It's very strange and there was in the past some garbled youtube language about why you can't. I read it and still didn't understand what it was trying to convey. While you can't make playlists personally, "kid playlists" do show up when you search and my experiences have been disturbing whenever i try any. The playlist starts with a video or two that you were probably searching for originally. You step away to unload the dishwasher or take care of the laundry while the little one continues to watch. Then all of a sudden an acid-trip, parody version of one of the previous videos kicks in with jarring effects, questionable and suggestive content and lyrics. But it never quite crosses a line that would get it kicked off of youtube. Viewed alone it might come off as funny to an adult or even teenager. How and why were the users of these playlists able to add/mix kids content with this other garbage and yet I can't make a private playlist with personally curated content? I will never allow my kid to watch youtube unless i'm picking personally previewed content. Edit: just to be clear these "kids playlists" do not contain content uploaded by the same user that created the playlist. Edit2: I am (we are) also premium users.
- saganus 5y ago
  Yeah, I remember reading a lot about those playlists, and I understasnd that can be pretty disturbing or upsetting if you as a parent assume that a playlist is "safe". However if YT already has the ability to mark videos as for kids-only, I have no idea why wouldn't they be able to restrict playlists that contain even a single video that is not kids-only. I.e. if you want to have a YT Kids' playlist, then all videos need to be YT Kids. But the other way around (i.e. a regular playlist with some YT Kids videos) seems irrational.

tomjuggler 5y ago

No, my kid does not get access to YouTube, I download videos with Freetube or NewPipe and he watches them offline. Unfortunately there really isn't anywhere else with the amount of content (good and bad)