
YouTube Kids Is Going to Release a Whitelisted, Non-Algorithmic Version of App - pulisse
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/youtube-kids-is-going-to-release-a-whitelisted-non
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throwaway93192
Parent and long-time ex-googler. I'm baffled that the original YT Kids was not
whitelisted, and in fact I uninstalled it from my little one's ipads a long
time ago. They were watching a Trolls (Dreamworks) animation, and I thought
"boy, the writing on this isn't very good, but whatever". Then the plot
started to become kinda bizarre and I realized it was a fake. As a user, I
felt duped by YT Kids, who had promised me a window into the internet I can
safely hand over to my <6-year olds. But really, it's just random people
around the world uploading junk.

As an ex-googler who saw the way some (a few) PMs made decisions with their
own Impact (aka career) in mind, I can cynically imagine them choosing the
algorithmic method because at Google you must scale, and you get promoted by
launching a cool machine learning product and not a product with <200 channels
that were hand-selected (that's boring!). But as a parent all I wanted was
just a few channels. Some disney, some science, etc.

~~~
ReverseCold
People vote with their actions time and time again that they do not care if
they are tracked.

If you want a future without all this happening, stop giving your kids YouTube
in the first place.

~~~
lern_too_spel
Parents explicitly do want to track what their children are watching. That's
not the problem. The problem is that YouTube Kids promotes garbage.

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77ko
The safest way to use YouTube with kids is to download videos offline using
youtube-dl or one of its front ends and use an app like VLC to play them.

Kids shouldn't be accessing YouTube directly. It really is bad. A simple
example: looking for videos for a school women's history day thingamajig,
YouTube kept recommending outright twisted videos which were sort of women's
history but algorithmically generated and just plain wrong.

The other interesting thing I found with YouTube is that it's very hard to
find good parent curated playlists. The bad stuff overwhelms the good.

~~~
sametmax
Children bellow 10 should not have access to internet without supervision IMO.

~~~
nojvek
We’re visiting some friends in Australia and almost everyone has an ipad per
kid with unrestricted YouTube access.

They feel kids keep themselves entertained with iPads and games. Some of them
have glasses at a young age since they look at the iPad so closely.

I’m legit worried for the next generation of kids who grow up on YouTube
consuming endless amounts of ads and crappy entertainment.

Add that to the fact that an iPad is a very poor creative device and mostly a
consuming device. I learnt programming at a young age because I had a proper
keyboard and programming was mildly entertaining. Flash and actionscript were
my canvas of endless creativity in holidays.

It’s almost impossible to program anything relatively complex on an iPad.

For the parents of HN, how do you ensure your kids use tech appropriately and
don’t develop mindless addiction to it?

~~~
mcphage
> I’m legit worried for the next generation of kids who grow up on YouTube
> consuming endless amounts of ads and crappy entertainment.

That's what we grew up on, too. I was hoping that streaming video would let me
cut ads out of my kids' lives, but... they just changed form.

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borne0
Hmm, my nephew already saw pepa pig having her teeth extracted on YouTube kids
so I'm gonna say this is too little too late.

~~~
mayniac
/r/ElsaGate monitors this quite actively.

The current prevailing non-tin-foil-hat theory is that some animators realised
that they could game YouTube's suggestion algorithm, and that kids videos are
an easy target. Kids also are very inquisitive when it comes to subjects you
tell them are inappropriate. Over time the videos with darker themes got more
clicks and it has spiralled out of control since. Throw in some bots to
increase views and comment rapidly once videos are released to increase
rankings and you've got a perfect ad-revenue scheme.

Of course there's nutjobs who think it's a pedophile ring normalising sexual
violence to kids, but there's an equal likelihood of pizzagate being real.

~~~
borne0
I think that's over thinking it a bit, youtube algos are easy to manipulate
and a single thread on 4chan can create a fair bit of weird media, for the
explicit intent of creating weird media.

~~~
mayniac
I do prefer the 4chan theory, since it satisfies Occam's Razor. That said, the
frequency of new videos from multiple channels dedicated to nothing but these
videos, as well as the monetisation, makes it unlikely. Also considering the
number of subscribers the subreddit has I'm sure that if there were any new
4chan threads suggesting people make those videos it would've been spotted.

It's honestly the sheer number of videos that is the shocking part of the
mystery. It's not just a few dozen videos from different animators, it's
hundreds of videos from dozens of channels pumping this stuff out.
Unfortunately I find it unlikely that we'll ever find out the cause.

~~~
andrepd
The cause is algorithms run amok. Find popular keywords: Elsa, Frozen, Fidget
Spinner, Sexual. Have an AI mix these in whatever weird way and churn out
nightmare fuel to kids, in exchange for big fat ad revenue. Kids, more easily
manipulated, and with a whole life as consumers ahead of them, are valuable
targets...

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djrogers
I don’t understand why YT a kids isn’t a completely parent controlled thing.
I’d like to be able to simply choose the channels that my kids can watch any
time, and let’s leave it at that.

Why does this not exist?

~~~
acct1771
You can.

You just have to do it "the old fashioned way", aka, spending the time with
your kids.

~~~
jamra
I spend tons of time with my kids. If I need to prepare food or feed my picky
daughter, YouTube can be helpful. This kind of shaming doesn’t help and I
don’t buy that you can watch your kids 24/7.

Besides, have you ever had a bad day and wanted to finish dinner while your
child decided to be a bit bratty? It’s not the best choice to put kids in
front of screens and I do it very minimally, but this shaming tactic isn’t
helpful

~~~
acct1771
My parents worked multiple jobs, still had the time to make selections of
titles to give me - or not.

This is not a corporation's job. Multiple streaming services have kid
sections, downloading actual files that are the ones you want your child to
see, etc.

Curating content for your children has never been faster or easier, so...how'd
our parents do it?

~~~
jamra
Your parents had youtube? The internet?

Have you seen what kind of bait and switch content is on youtube? It can look
like a children's show, but turn out to be something really creepy.

If you think it's the job of parents to curate content, that's also fine, but
youtube should allow for a feature that lets you whitelist content.

It sounds like you had lovely parents, though. Congratulations.

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jasonkostempski
One step closer to the only thing I ever wanted, an app that lets _me_
whitelist the channels. Without having to create an account too. The list will
be small enough to store locally and pass with every list request. I never
want to see another video about colors wrapped in bible verses for the rest of
my life.

~~~
noir_lord
Same, I'm interested in Programming, Chess, History and Engineering.

YouTube recommends "Secret Alien Spaceship you didn't know about" or some
equally inane bullshit.

It's so bad I used ublock origin to just filter out that entire vertical
section.

The recommendations are simply useless to an end user.

~~~
mistermann
I watch youtube a LOT and have 3 or 4 different primary interests, and I
regularly spend a fair amount of time looking for new channels, etc typically
with no success. And then occasionally, I will sometimes come across a
perfectly relevant channel with 1 million+ subscribers, that the youtube
algorithm has never suggested to me as a channel, or even any of the
individual videos. It is so inept that it seems impossible to be accidental -
obviously that makes no sense at all, but then knowingly allowing twisted
videos to continue existing in children's channels makes no sense either, yet
here we are.

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Nition
Whitelisted by YouTube. Still no app to let the user whitelist channels or
videos themselves. Only blacklist, which is useless with the amount of
channels on YouTube.

~~~
0x00000000
Blacklisting doesn't even work. I blocked a channel and clicked "not
interested" on about 10 videos and still keep getting videos from that channel

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josteink
TIL there _is_ a YouTube kids service/app. Which I can’t use because of my IP-
address. Again.

I guess for us outside the US we’ll just have to wait another 5 years for
google to flip the switch to make this worldwide. Again.

At stuff like, Google really systematically sucks.

~~~
kristiandupont
In this particular case, they will probably need local curators everywhere not
just because of language but also because of what is considered safe for kids
given the culture. So yes, it will probably take some time but I think that is
understandable. After all, what's stopping someone in your (or my) country
from making such a service themselves, even using Youtubes content?

~~~
izacus
Why can't the parents decide if the curation is good enough? Why is a complete
hard lockout with no choice "understandable"?

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nightcracker
Wow, a whitelisted, non-algorithmic feed of videos! Oh wait, do you mean... a
playlist?

~~~
romuloab42
If we could restrict the app to just play videos of a single playlist, life
would be great. But today it is very easy for kids to exit playlist mode, thus
defeating the purpose of curating a playlist.

~~~
fma
My wife's business has a TV that plays some videos from YouTube of her company
in the waiting room. At the end of the Playlist pops up videos from
competitors. In the past it would autoplay those and it was embarassing but at
least I turned that off.

She pays for YouTube Red. There is no way for YouTube to not autosuggest, or
to repeat the videos in a Playlist over and over.

I decided for her to use YouTube because of the auto caption. Will need to
find some other solution...

~~~
rasz
Its trivial on the desktop with one of the extensions/userscripts, both hiding
suggestions and autoplaying what you select.

~~~
fma
Yes, actually you can do it on a computer easily. You can even use like
ListenOnRepeat.com and control the playlist. The problem is when she opens her
retail location she wants to do it from the app on the tv, or app on her phone
and do a Chromecast.

I'd rather not install a computer there just to show some videos...and I don't
know why YouTube forces the suggested videos to paying customers without
giving an option to turn it off.

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annamargot
So it’s Netflix but with ads and worse content?

We deleted YT on our devices the kids use. Google policy and practice changes
so frequently, I don’t trust them as a long term solution. And like I said the
content is low quality for the most part anyway.

Netflix has plenty of quality kids content for us.

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afandian
"Non-algorithmic"? It seems like the word algorithm is being bleached to the
point of meaningless. I even saw a social media type service (I forget what)
advertise it's self as having "no algorithms".

Feels a bit like people being scared of "chemicals in their food".

I hope we don't get to the point where "algorithm" has only a narrow popular
denotation and only negative connotation.

~~~
Zhyl
I got annoyed at my father once for making a sarcastic comment about
'algorithms' in the sense you're describing here. So I sat him down at the
table and cut 10 bits of string of different length. I then walked him through
bubble sorting the bits of string. Then I said something like 'that is all an
algorithm is. A set of rules or instructions that a computer can follow. The
only trick the computer has is that it can do the instructions really quickly.
There is no magic and they're not inherently oppressive.'

I wasn't expecting it to work, but after that he never made another dig at
'algorithms'.

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intopieces
Amazon has an excellent resource for Kids, where the content is curated by
professionals. It's called Amazon FreeTime Unlimited. Why doesn't Google have
the same already?

~~~
snuxoll
I have a love/hate relationship with FreeTime Unlimited. At $3 or so a month
it’s a great value, but I really wish there was a whitelist option for parents
instead of the blacklist they already have, my wife and I have grown tired of
trawling though the lists every month to ensure we keep some of content we
don’t care for blocked.

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psyc
YouTube responding to users' serious concerns? And it only took about 3 years?
Well, may wonders never cease.

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magoon
But not for Chromebook.

It’s amazing how high & dry parents are left without options for their kids to
use a Chromebook. You wouldn’t believe it until you see for yourself.

~~~
adorton
A few months ago, my Chromebook was updated to support Android apps. YouTube
Kids should be available on the Play store assuming your Chromebook is updated
to support it.

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carlhjerpe
The bad parts of the internet has become too easily accessible, the greed of
the 21th century is abusing childrens brains. That's what i can agree with,
but employing first class espionage on your kids isn't nice either. It'll
remove all trust between them and you, and they'll probably get used to it and
not question spying governments and compaies either.

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ascorbic
I wonder if there will be a quality filter too. When my kids (now 6 and 4)
were allowed YT Kids, even the "appropriate" videos were mostly terrible toy
reviews and things like that. I've no idea why kids like them so much. I
uninstalled it. Now the only video app they're allowed is BBC iPlayer Kids,
which is great (but I'm assuming UK-only).

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spraak
Are there any apps that just let you select specific videos or playlists? That
is, I'd like something even more customizable.

~~~
tomstockmail
I don't know of any apps that do this exactly, so maybe if you want to stay
within YouTube you could try restricting to a playlist. But that still has the
possibility of random videos playing at some point. I've also been looking for
something that allows me to loop videos, although that's more for creating a
TV-channel like loop for my grandparents.

To be safe in this situation I'd just use something like youtube-dl [1] and
save filtered videos locally. Kids tend to watch the same videos over and
over, so why not save bandwidth/battery life and store it locally when it's so
cheap to do so. And since it's likely cartoons, the compression is better
saving even more space. Tip: You can download playlists, so if you set a
cronjob task to download a playlist you can add videos to it from anywhere you
have access to YouTube.

[1] [https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/)

~~~
romuloab42
That was my conclusion as well. I didn't get fancy about setting cronjobs. I
just run a script every now and then, and it is enough for my case.

I'm still looking for a good player that would behave somewhat like Youtube
Kids (auto play, fullscreen, no volume/brightness controls). All players I've
tried have controls that kids don't understand and, accidentally or
intentionally, end up ruining everything.

~~~
icebraining
For what platform? On Android, MX Player has a lock functionality, and a Kids
Lock plugin (makes a bit harder to unlock).

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jgalt212
Youtube regular is still very very busted. Why is Russia Today showing up in
my top recommended? To answer the obvious follow up question, I have never
liked, subscribed or watched a RT video.

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acobster
Reminds me of a fictional program devised by EFF: YTKAd-Free.

[https://www.eff.org/missing-devices](https://www.eff.org/missing-devices)

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AndrewOMartin
Who do you trust to decide what your kid should be able to see?

Human editorial is certainly better than algorithm editorial, and YouTube Kids
was a nightmare so I'm not complaining, but I'm sure the value judgements of a
lot of respectable YouTube employees are very different to mine.

Are Christian and Islamic and Scientologist morality tales all acceptable or
not? What about science and engineering videos with high safety requirements,
or even history?

~~~
coatmatter
In Australia, I believe most parents are happy to trust other parents they
know as well as teachers and the ABC (our national taxypayer funded
broadcaster). Relatively speaking, I think we do reasonably well; although
Finland is probably the world's model citizen when it comes to raising kids.

Do you trust anyone?

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fudged71
Finally, it's YouTube Kids, for Kids!

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w-ll
What ever happen to Yahooligans?

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faostb
I had the same issue (bad content for kids on Kids Youtube) so I built
[http://kiddotube.com/](http://kiddotube.com/) for my kid (be careful: it is
just a micro ec2 instance) with only best youtube channels for kids. There is
a "parent mode" in which I can disable channels, playlists or videos that I
don't like.

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pfarnsworth
My son loves YouTube kids (my daughter not so much) but luckily we haven’t
come up against Elsagate yet. He’s simply too dorky with his video choices. He
has learned all about astronomy through YTK and most recently he has learned
all the American presidents from YTK videos.

I am surprised that there’s no whitelisting though. Looks like we’re going all
the way back to the original Yahoo days with their curated list of acceptable
web site lists.

------
unicornporn
Just curious, is there advertising in the YouTube Kids app?

~~~
replicatorblog
nope!

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bberrry
As far as I know Youtube Kids is still unavailable outside the US. Anyone
aware of a workaround to get it on my iPad?

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sunstone
I think it's pretty clear that with kids the solution is a tablet with known
content and no connectivity.

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SN76477
ahh yes, the non-algorithm - also the future. As we learn that automation
sucks for human interaction

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Overtonwindow
This sounds good but I see another side: Targeted advertising to kids.

~~~
dbasedweeb
Of course, most programming for kids has been just that for decades, with a
few notable exceptions (Sesame Street, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, others
probably). The programs themselves when I was a kid typically took the form of
a 22 minute toy advertisement, interspersed with more advertising. Of course,
they didn’t have data on my particular viewing habits and a psych profile, but
honestly it still worked pretty well.

The best bet if you care about your kid is probably to try and curate
yourself. That’s definitely doable if you’re well-off in a two parent home
with one child at a time, but how many families does that describe on average?

~~~
InitialLastName
> they didn’t have data on my particular viewing habits and a psych profile

I'd bet that 8-year olds (as a population), with their under-cooked brains and
extremely limited autonomy have MUCH more predictable psych profiles and
viewing habits than adults as a population.

Anecdote for illustration: I, and everybody I went to school with, watched the
same show when we got home from school. How much more predictable a viewing
pattern can you get? Plus, you can bet that I wanted whatever toy they were
advertising, and bugged my parents about it as soon as I could.

Thinking about it, I'll never see data to confirm this but I'll bet childrens'
TV advertisers have better conversion rates than Facebook, with all of its
carefully mined and organized profiling data.

~~~
Larrikin
I have a friend at Bandai that says the US market actually has laws that
prevent the situation that occurs in Japan.

Shows like Power Rangers basically have their entire commercial blocks bought
out by the toy company that manufactures the Power Rangers toys. This creates
a very interesting relationship where the show runners and toy creators work
together when creating the next season, where the two companies have veto
power over ideas from the other. The toy companies come up with special guns
or powers unique from the previous toy line, but the show producer can argue
that it wouldn't translate well on screen or that there aren't enough good
story lines and vice versa.

In America atleast the toy tie ins are limited in the amount of advertising
they can show. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the limitations on online
advertising are far weaker than their television equivalents. This tracks with
my own viewings as a child from what I can remember. I remember being
bombarded with toy ads when I was young, but I also remember being excited
about toy tie ins I didn't know existed when I got my parents to rent Power
Rangers on VHS and having the first and last 5 minutes of the video tape
consist of toy advertisements.

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uhuru
Is hackernews censoring peoples comments ?

How long is this been going on ..

------
mozumder
Earlier I suggested YouTube start to use actual editors:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16758397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16758397)

I guess this is their response.

AI will never replace humans in judgement. Sorry Silicon Valley. It's not
going to happen. Stop trying to make it happen.

~~~
taeric
I would be surprised if AI doesn't assist in the near future. Now, even.

~~~
nostalgeek
"assist" is the key here. Often big companies such as Google believe than AI
can "replace", because any process involving human interaction "doesn't
scale".

~~~
taeric
Agreed. Apologies for keeping my first post too brief.

I think, quite firmly, that what we call ai we'll be used to augment many
techniques without replacing them. I share the scepticism that it will replace
them.

Though, I think it is prudent to acknowledge the progress that has been made.
My self twenty years ago would be impressed with what we have. I suspect the
same will be true in another twenty.

