Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Launched Playtoob, a simple YouTube companion, because my 5yo daughter loves it

playtoob.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 80 posts

Re: Launched Playtoob, a simple YouTube companion, because my 5yo daughter loves it

#11

Post by chankstein38 »

masspro wrote: post #9
devrimco wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

noted the feature requests, thank you. already started working on the channel name thingy. i also like algorithms but i decided it was not for kids, when i saw a friends little son watching video of a toy spiderman being bathed by a toy barbie acted by an old bald russian man, i decided it was not for kids. :) also i would like to watch the latest high rated videos from only my favorite channels while i'm having a sa…

> i also like algorithms but i decided it was not for kids Yeah, I’ve only ever heard negative things about video suggestions for kids. I guess the key search term for those who don’t know is “Elsagate”. Normal looking videos that draw in kids with popular characters and then suddenly they are doing bloody surgery on each other or whatever. I don’t even know if there’s negative intent on the part of the creators or i…

>negative intent

I think clickbaiting children in to a less-than-savory theme so you can get their ad revenue is probably enough negative intent to make me grossed out by them.

Re: Launched Playtoob, a simple YouTube companion, because my 5yo daughter loves it

#12

Post by masspro »

chankstein38 wrote: post #11
masspro wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i also like algorithms but i decided it was not for kids Yeah, I’ve only ever heard negative things about video suggestions for kids. I guess the key search term for those who don’t know is “Elsagate”. Normal looking videos that draw in kids with popular characters and then suddenly they are doing bloody surgery on each other or whatever. I don’t even know if there’s negative intent on the part of the creators or i…

>negative intent I think clickbaiting children in to a less-than-savory theme so you can get their ad revenue is probably enough negative intent to make me grossed out by them.

Very fair. You just exposed a part of my brain to me, where I put “bad profit-driven motive” into a separate bucket that I consider less severe than “direct evil desire for harm”, and now that I see that I’m not sure how bad that thought process sucks. It’s definitely driven by getting (too?) used to things having an average level of shittiness.

Re: Launched Playtoob, a simple YouTube companion, because my 5yo daughter loves it

#14

Post by chankstein38 »

masspro wrote: post #12
chankstein38 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>negative intent I think clickbaiting children in to a less-than-savory theme so you can get their ad revenue is probably enough negative intent to make me grossed out by them.

Very fair. You just exposed a part of my brain to me, where I put “bad profit-driven motive” into a separate bucket that I consider less severe than “direct evil desire for harm”, and now that I see that I’m not sure how bad that thought process sucks. It’s definitely driven by getting (too?) used to things having an average level of shittiness.

I totally feel that! I'm there too. The average level of shittiness has increased so much I basically don't expect things to work unless the specific feature makes the company money. Otherwise, it feels like an afterthought that may or may not function properly. Also, in case it was unclear, my original response wasn't meant as any criticism towards you. More just disgust towards those folks.

Re: Launched Playtoob, a simple YouTube companion, because my 5yo daughter loves it

#15

Post by furyofantares »

Sounds excellent.

I download whole channels and serve them on Plex. It requires a fair bit of management, and doesn't work when traveling, or if my desktop PC is VPN'd somewhere or off. This is all to prevent suggestions and random browsing. A much simpler solution is very welcome.

Re: Launched Playtoob, a simple YouTube companion, because my 5yo daughter loves it

#18

Post by Cyph0n »

furyofantares wrote: post #15

Sounds excellent. I download whole channels and serve them on Plex. It requires a fair bit of management, and doesn't work when traveling, or if my desktop PC is VPN'd somewhere or off. This is all to prevent suggestions and random browsing. A much simpler solution is very welcome.

Same, but served via Jellyfin. If you haven’t already, make sure to check out Tubesync. It makes managing the downloading side a breeze.

https://github.com/meeb/tubesync

Re: Launched Playtoob, a simple YouTube companion, because my 5yo daughter loves it

#19

Post by Supermancho »

Etheryte wrote: post #16
carabiner wrote: post #13

[flagged]

This comment is bleak. Surely you can provide some feedback that's more constructive?

Im pretty sure they meant it is obvious that a flat random signup for some kid-focused product, without a demo, is a bad indicator for the longevity of the product; not to mention the ethos of the development.

On the flip side, it is likely to last/be available a bit longer without drawing Google's attention, due to the unnecessary friction.

Re: Launched Playtoob, a simple YouTube companion, because my 5yo daughter loves it

#20

Post by devrimco »

chankstein38 wrote: post #10
devrimco wrote: post #2

Hi, this is a very simple Youtube playing companion, to watch what you actually choose. I'm a father and a developer. My children needed this. So, I'm lucky I could build it. This became also my preferred Youtube watching experience. Please try?

It says it plays "The best videos from the channel". How is that decided without algorithms? I'm not challenging you I'm just curious. This seems like a great thing, like the copy says "Now there's easily something to watch during dinner" I just don't understand if it's just most recent videos or what.

yeah. full disclosure, i go far back to get latest couple of hundreds of videos. (i may increase this in the future) and filter out the crap that is live, shorts, and all the restricted non embeddable ones. and i get all their stats. so i try to have around at least 100 "proper" ones of the latest videos.

even for mrbeast for example it goes back till 2019. and believe me, old videos are not that attractive to "kids", i was going to say, but i found myself skipping them too.

and present the user with an option to order by highest rated or highest viewed.

this way i get latest videos of the channel. eg. ordered by the most viewed. and it plays continuously. shuffled in batches of 5.

Post reply on HN