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Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

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Re: Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

#231
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can block the YouTube domains on pie hole or with something like OpenDNS.

I did that and then my 10-year-old installed a vpn extension on his Chromebook.

It's always a cat and mouse game, and was when we were kids too.

You can (in order of simplicity):

* Get a list of common VPN provider domains and block in DNS

* Block all traffic to common DNS ports

* Use various filtering/monitoring applications to categorise traffic and look for odd outliers (probably VPNs)

* Force proxy only access and MITM sniff traffic

Of course the most important thing to do is discuss consequences and bring up why it's hurtful for him to lie to you via his actions. But the above technical solutions will cover 95% of what most kids can do... Until they can get a mobile data connection.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with children's online habits?

#232

I have some pre-teen children that have access to an iPad, Xbox, and an Apple TV. My #1 recommendation is NO YOUTUBE, unless it's for education purposes. I don't have the App installed on any of my kids devices (they can access it via the website, but they don't do that). It's just a cesspool of garbage for kids. Even YouTube Kids is bad. Occasionally, they will complain about not having the YouTube app... but I neve…

YouTube is horrible. They use it for school occasionally and so it would have to be available during that Covid year of online schooling. My wife actually noticed that around Feb of 2021, the algorithm had won. Our son was hooked. ‘How can a 6 year old boy compete with a bunch of engineers at Google?’ - wife Since that time I have been playing with a YouTube app concept that only allows limited access and doesn’t aut…

What about these alternative YT front ends that I can’t remember the names of? They’re all based on the same software but some people make their instances public.

There is no algorithm there, no ads, no auto play.

On Androïd, what about newpipe?

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