
Our first building block in tech for tykes: YouTube Kids - rey12rey
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/02/youtube-kids.html?m=0
======
swamp40
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The lack of curation on YouTube has been a source of frustration in our house
for a _long_ time.

The kids just scroll down the list on the side of the viewer and hit whatever
video they think looks interesting.

Then the next thing you hear is swearing, and there's no effective way to stop
that from showing up on 100,000 other kid's feeds. (And it would be so easy to
implement!)

Our kids _love_ the variety of YouTube. Even Netflix is too slow and
inconvenient for them.

~~~
inanutshellus
Last week we were watching "Annie" music videos on YouTube with my four year
old and a commercial for a horror movie comes on.

It was a calamity. To stop the video, (which was being Chromecast onto my TV)
I jumped to the couch to get my phone, waited for it to wake up, then spasmed
on the screen trying to figure out how to exit or pause or whatever. It of
course ignored me entirely. After all, the only reason I'd skip an ad is
because I'm trying to bypass their ad-revenue. _Le sigh_.

My wife is meanwhile trying to get my daughter's attention innocuously so she
won't watch a dead, rotting woman attack a little boy.

...

Needless to say, this change is welcome.

------
tremendo
I have a younger-than-thirteen daughter who would love to be able to __post
__her video creations to YT too, and have her own channel. I had created a
gmail account for her before, then she tried to create her channel and was
asked for her DOB which she answered truthfully resulting in… not only no
channel, her whole email was blocked and, according to their statement,
eventually deleted. Yes, mea culpa.

YT for kids is welcome, but alas, does not yet help make my little one happy.
Is there a way to let little ones publish their own creations on their own
terms? anywhere?

~~~
jjoonathan
Lying about your age to get around a low-stakes boneheaded policy is about as
white as a lie can get.

I still use my fake birthday (Jan 1 1984) for online accounts even though I'm
25. It's not exactly Rosa Parks level civil disobedience but it seems like the
least I can do. January 1 birthdays both allow the provider to cover their ass
and allow you to register your contempt for the silliness in a measurable
fashion.

~~~
amitparikh
I still believe that COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) is,
overall, beneficial legislation that puts in place the minimum rules for
protecting children's PII. As the Internet becomes more accessible to a
younger audience, we should be considering the societal benefits of such
legislation and how it should evolve with the technology. It's shortsighted to
fault Google for complying with the law.

~~~
ChrisOstler
For me, that's where it gets interesting: as I understand, it is perfectly
legal for Google to provide services to children, but they must obtain
parental consent, first [1]. The problem is that isn't something they're
interested in doing.

[1] [http://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/comp...](http://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
center/guidance/complying-coppa-frequently-asked-questions#Verifiable)
Parental

~~~
VLM
When this happened to my son, rather than deleting everything and losing all
his contacts and emails with his auntie etc etc, google just demanded I pay a
bribe of 50 cents on a credit card, on the hilarious assumption that the only
people in a family with access to CC are parents. At least this is how they
did it back in the good old days.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _on the hilarious assumption that the only people in a family with access to
> CC are parents_ //

Hilarious? How do under-13s get banks to issue them credit cards? Presumably
they only allow the payment from a CC connected to an account rather than a
payment card (I assume payment gateways do that sort of differentiation).

Even if some under-13s can access and use a credit-card it seems likely to me
that the vast majority would be blocked by such a system. I can see kids
stealing cash from their parents, perhaps, but stealing when you know it's
going to appear on their bank-statement?? Just to use YouTube? Then you need
to be able to actually perform the payment; no-one else [that I know of] knows
my CC password and it's certainly not written down anywhere.

~~~
xanderstrike
I got a debit card when I got my first bank account at 10 years old in ~2001.
I didn't pay for anything online with it until my mid teens (when I had a
job), but I do remember having to use it to verify my account for the
SecondLife teen grid.

Virtually all bank accounts come with debit cards nowadays, if your parents
are forward thinking enough to set you up with a bank account then you could
have a card very young.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I got a debit card somewhere around becoming a teenager. But it was probably a
decade later that I got my first _credit_ card. They're quite different
things.

In the UK under 18 you can't usually be held to a contract and so you don't
have to pay back a credit card debt - this makes companies more than a little
reluctant to lend to under 18s. You can't get a credit card until you're 18.

Citizens Advice (an established UK charity) say:

>"If you are under 18, it is a criminal offence for anyone to send you
material inviting you to borrow money or obtain goods or services on credit or
hire purchase. However, if you are over 14 but under 18, you can enter into a
credit or hire purchase agreement if an adult acts as your guarantor."

Of course it might vary enormously in other countries but I'd be surprised if
it was wildly different in USA?

------
thorntonbf
I realize that full curation probably isn't possible as this thing scales, but
as a parent, this thing will live or die based on the content they allow into
the stream.

I love watching videos of people building stuff with my kids. Moreover, I love
watching the creativeness that some of the videos inspire in my kids.
Unfortunately, to date, I have had to preview most of the content my children
see on YouTube so that they don't either see a video review of something
that's got the f-bomb every other word, or that the sidebar video
recommendations don't bring up stuff that I really don't want my kid watching.
And, to be clear, these are young kids.

In my mind, this is all about the content, the creators they allow into the
system, and the curation of those two. I'd love to see an algorithmic way to
accomplish some of this, but I expect on the front end, it'll require a lot of
human filtering.

~~~
avalaunch
I don't watch much on YouTube so they may already do some of this but it seems
to me like this would be an easy problem to solve if they so desired. Add a
rating system where the content creators rate themselves and an easy way for
viewers to flag them as incorrectly rated. Add to that a confidence rating of
how likely a video is correctly rated (based on number of views without
flagging) and you could confidently let your kids view appropriately rated
material.

~~~
VLM
Whats it rating and how badly will it get abused?

Imagine a youtube video of President Obama's October 2nd 2002 speech on Iraq
policy (not making this up, there is one...)

Or there's a classic nuclear winter / climate change-ish interview with Dr
Carl Sagan right before he died in the early 90s.

Or any video that presents atheism or islam in a non-negative light. Say, a
BBC interview with Richard Dawkins WRT his biographical book.

I suspect they'll be more than a little political gaming going on here,
although theoretically a kid doing schoolwork could stumble upon them as a
legitimate primary(ish) source.

------
famousactress
I can't find mention of whether or not there are ads. Ads are a deal-breaker
for me with the kidlet. Currently whenever she asks to "See ostriches" or
"People throwing fish!" (we brought her to Pike's Place market in Seattle and
the kid was oddly obsesseed) it's a dice roll whether we sit through a Lexus
ad. I'd happily pay a modest amount for a product like this one provided she
doesn't have to see ads (regardless of whether targeted to kids of their
Lexus-purchasing parents)

~~~
coldpie
On PC, AdBlock works great on YouTube. If you're using a mobile app, yeah, I
think you're SOL for now. I also would pay a monthly fee for an ad-free
YouTube.

~~~
ashark
Recently, I've seen two things change on YouTube:

1) (a few months ago) Adblock stopped working. Fine, ads were rare, short, and
skipable, didn't bother me enough to try to fix it.

2) (a few weeks ago) The percentage of videos displaying ads increased
significantly, and most of them are now unskipable.

I even had one that lasted for maybe two minutes with no sign of ending the
other day (it hadn't repeated yet, it was _that_ long! There was no indication
of how much longer it would be) which eventually prompted me to reload the
page, which clued me in that the "unskipable" ads can be skipped immediately
by refreshing the page—it rarely (maybe 5% of the time, tops) plays an ad on
the second load.

~~~
magicalist
> _(a few weeks ago) The percentage of videos displaying ads increased
> significantly, and most of them are now unskipable._

Whether or not ads are unskippable (and whether or not to show ads at all) is
up to the video owner, so it's more likely you've just wandered into a
different subset of videos recently.

I almost never see unskippable ads anymore, though it seems like the worst
offenders are "official" vevo music videos and (most annoyingly, since the
video itself is already an ad) some studios' movie trailers.

------
sremani
I would also want to know how much stuff is tracked. Disney knows the secret,
that the shortest path to a parents wallet is through the kid, I am not
against Google-Youtube making money out of this, but just want to know what is
and what is not tracked. Of course, ad policy will also help.

------
impostervt
My kids, 5 and 2, have really been into these weird toy unboxing videos
recently. They're fine with me from a "ok for kids" point of view, though I
don't see the attraction. Anyway, I just wonder if these type of videos will
be available.

example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_e8CPuVepA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_e8CPuVepA)

~~~
raldi
Relax, your kids are normal -- this is a well-known phenomenon amongst
children born in the last decade:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/magazine/a-mothers-
journey...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/17/magazine/a-mothers-journey-
through-the-unnerving-universe-of-unboxing-videos.html)

~~~
impostervt
Ha! Thank you for the link. I wasn't worried, I generally figure all kids do
"weird" things. I guess I'm more worried they won't be able to see these
videos on the Kids youtube, and thus the app won't help me protect them from
weirder things they sometimes stumble onto.

~~~
swalsh
The Disney collector lady is something like the #1 youtuber in terms of views
in North America (or close the last time I checked). I don't think youtube is
going to skip her.

------
captn3m0
The YouTube Blog[1] has better description of the product.

[1]: [http://youtube-global.blogspot.in/2015/02/youtube-
kids.html](http://youtube-global.blogspot.in/2015/02/youtube-kids.html)

~~~
0942v8653
The links to the App Store and Google Play weren't showing up for me. Here's
why:

    
    
        <a href="https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/288696178;115706119;v">Google Play</a>

------
jasonkostempski
This is a great start! Ultimately, I'd rather my kid just have a 'kids
account' (similar to Apple's model) and my wife and I would be the curators.
In that setup Google could just expose a bunch of themed, kid friendly
aggregate feeds parents could choose to include or not. For now I would settle
for the ability to allow specific channels regardless of rating. For instance,
I see Stampy is already in there but he swears occasionally, not enough for me
to care but likely enough to get hit by an automated filter.

------
4ndr3vv
Don't get too excited, global Youtube audience! This is US only.

------
codingdave
While I do think this is a good move for YouTube, it isn't enough to win my
family's viewership, because the age-appropriate issues of YouTube are not
their only problem (quality of content is still an issue), and there are other
video sources if I want to educate my children via online videos. Khan Academy
is the most obvious one that comes to mind, but we also will watch
documentaries on Netflix, and watch the Smithsonian channel on our Roku.

------
webwanderings
Have waited too long for you guys to grow up, have family, kids...so you can
make web usable for kids. This is better be good and without crapAdwares. Will
give it a try.

------
mikeleeorg
In case you're curious, here are two existing apps that also curate and list
only kid-friendly videos:

Cakey (from the creator of HotOrNot):

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cakey/id906087656](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cakey/id906087656)

Wimp:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wimp.com-family-friendly-
vid...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wimp.com-family-friendly-
videos/id412842333)

------
adaml_623
I want to know if it will have caching for offline use. Don't care if it is
like Spotify and needs to check in occasionally but would really like to be
able to have something for the kid on long haul flights.

------
blakeja
Curious to know how many of you with children are going to use the time limit
feature? I have a kid on the way and I have concerns about my child spending
his formative years glued to youtube...

~~~
VanillaCafe
As a parent of three young children, we've established weekends (Friday
evening, Saturday, Sunday) as video and screen time. This is pretty easy
criteria for the kids to understand which makes it easier to enforce no video
Mon-Thu. The weekends are nice because the kids get the equivalent experience
of Saturday morning cartoons and it lets us parents sleep in a bit.

Even so, we notice that too much video (more than 40m-1h in one session) makes
at least one of our kids pretty cranky. So, we might consider the time limit
feature.

To keep them off the screen, we just have lots of clay, crayons, scissors,
construction paper, tape, legos, books, puzzles, etc. And playground visits.

We often find that by the end of the day on the weekend, if it was one of
those days where they watched a little more video than less, they complain
that there was still [some craft project thing] that they wanted to do. So,
providing a bit of structure to limit screen time ultimately is letting them
get to do other things that they really want to do.

------
mohanrajn84
I am trying to download from play store (from India), it shows "This Item not
available in your country"

~~~
memorion
try downloading it from apkmirror.com

------
nakedrobot2
Good. Kudos. Too many times my kids surf their way to something weird starting
from Peppa Pig or something ;-)

thanks Google.

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happyscrappy
Wow, it looks really good, especially the old school Sesame Street giving me
some memories. Lego channel is cool too but damn App Store search is not even
showing it yet I had to download to the desktop and find it in Purchased.

