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Our first building block in tech for tykes: YouTube Kids

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Re: Our first building block in tech for tykes: YouTube Kids

#51

Post by jjoonathan »

amitparikh wrote: post #43
jjoonathan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I don't know enough about COPPA to know who to blame. There are two possibilities:

1. COPPA goes too far

2. Google has done a cost/benefit analysis and decided that it's cheaper to ban children than to lead the charge in teasing out the edge cases

If #2 is the case it's absolutely reasonable to blame google. Of course, deciding who to blame isn't productive, what we really want to do is lobby for change. Now that google is playing the lobbying game they're a reasonable party to appeal to regardless of whether #1 or #2 is closer to the truth.

Re: Our first building block in tech for tykes: YouTube Kids

#52

Post by coldpie »

j_s wrote: post #46
coldpie wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As of Jan'2014, stopping YouTube ads requires blocking the following domains: ads.youtube.com s0.2mdn.net s1.2mdn.net googleads.g.doubleclick.net Many routers include functionality to blacklist by domain, eg. Netgear: http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/20483/~/set-up...

Hey, thanks! I'll give that a shot.

Re: Our first building block in tech for tykes: YouTube Kids

#53

Post by 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.

Re: Our first building block in tech for tykes: YouTube Kids

#54

Post by jonnathanson »

VLM wrote: post #44
jonnathanson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will absolutely require some human filtering, even if only as a backstop. That parents feel safe and comfortable with the content -- and all "adjacencies," such as comments, ads, and so forth -- is critical. I'm not sure what their content strategy will be, but by way of inference from public record (job listings, this blog post, etc.), I would guess that they're priming the pump with content from established, k…

"kid-friendly publishers" What does that mean? I'm one of those minecraft weirdos and I can authoritatively say based on many hours of entertainment viewing that Direwolf20 and Pahamir have never said anything non-G rated, at least in their team video series so far as I've seen. So that's boring and no point discussing. And my son has this unique skill to find "lets play" minecraft videos where basically every other…

"What does that mean?"

All I really meant is known commodities with proven track records in kid's learning and edutainment properties. Reading Rainbow (cited in the blog post) is a good example. Disney might be another hypothetical example.

"I'm one of those minecraft weirdos and I can authoritatively say based on many hours of entertainment viewing that Direwolf20 and Pahamir have never said anything non-G rated, at least in their team video series so far as I've seen. So that's boring and no point discussing."

I'm not saying these folks aren't kid-friendly. I certainly didn't mean to draw a qualitative distinction between, say, Disney and Direwolf20. I didn't mean to create a category "kid-friendly" in which these sorts of creators do or do not fall. I was speaking more broadly -- and speculating, as I mentioned -- about what Google seems to be up to.

All of this is speculation on my part, based on having closely followed this space, having followed YouTube/Google's job listings very closely over the last four or five months, and having had casual chats with friends at Google and YouTube.

"So video training a 3 year old to walk around the house saying "damn it" randomly is not going to fly, but how about a kid who's in his last months of preteen? Especially if the video is 99.9% G rated?"

My understanding is that Google is focused very specifically on the young, young demo. A 3-year-old fits into what I understand of their thesis; an 11-year-old might not. But again, this is my best guess. I can neither speak on Google's behalf, nor claim any special knowledge above and beyond what is publicly available.

Re: Our first building block in tech for tykes: YouTube Kids

#55

Post by 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.

Re: Our first building block in tech for tykes: YouTube Kids

#56

Post by magicalist »

ashark wrote: post #28
coldpie wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 wa…

> (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.

Re: Our first building block in tech for tykes: YouTube Kids

#57

Post by petercooper »

VLM wrote: post #44
jonnathanson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will absolutely require some human filtering, even if only as a backstop. That parents feel safe and comfortable with the content -- and all "adjacencies," such as comments, ads, and so forth -- is critical. I'm not sure what their content strategy will be, but by way of inference from public record (job listings, this blog post, etc.), I would guess that they're priming the pump with content from established, k…

"kid-friendly publishers" What does that mean? I'm one of those minecraft weirdos and I can authoritatively say based on many hours of entertainment viewing that Direwolf20 and Pahamir have never said anything non-G rated, at least in their team video series so far as I've seen. So that's boring and no point discussing. And my son has this unique skill to find "lets play" minecraft videos where basically every other…

I suspect he is quite familiar with all the swear words yet behaves himself in public so all is well.

Yeah, I think it depends on the kid and the parents' ability to define boundaries and not treat kids as mini-adults with the rights of adults. My dad swore like a trooper (still does) and I knew all the words by the time I was a teenager, but I didn't dare swear until I was an adult.

It's decidedly untrendy to treat kids as kids and adults as adults these days, but I think having one rule for kids and one for adults is the best way to go.

Re: Our first building block in tech for tykes: YouTube Kids

#58

Post by petercooper »

impostervt wrote: post #13
vyrotek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things are seriously blowing up! I've talked to so many parents who mention that their kids are hooked on these things. These kids just watch some random toy be unwrapped then hit the next suggested video for hours. I also hear stories about how then they beg their parents for the toy. They're just really long commercials. My kids don't seem as interested but it might be they're a bit old for them now. I have n…

Ya, I don't mind the unboxing videos, but the other day my 5 year old had somehow gotten from Frozen sing alongs to a weird manga-version of Let it Go. I figured from that point she was probably only a few clicks a way from really weird videos and made her go back to the eggs...

My daughter isn't much into YouTube now but went through a phase of watching about an hour a day and, boy, she watched some bizarre stuff! I think she watched more obscure Russian and Slavic cartoons from the 70s than anything in English. None offensive, but certainly weird. I'm kinda hoping it rubs off in terms of being generally progressive and a weird arty person though.. we shall see ;-)

(And before anyone asks, being exposed to hours of non-English language content appears to have had zero effect in either a negative or positive way, alas.)

Re: Our first building block in tech for tykes: YouTube Kids

#59

Post by 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

Wimp:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wimp.com-family-friendly-vid...

Re: Our first building block in tech for tykes: YouTube Kids

#60

Post by pbhjpbhj »

VLM wrote: post #49
ChrisOstler wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... Parental

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.

>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.

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