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Comment by atonse | Hacker News Reader

We currently don't allow our son to watch anything on youtube, simply because it's a cesspool of horrible videos for children. You're always almost one click away from some violent video where cartoon characters are getting their limbs chopped off, etc. And it's sickening that Google's done nothing about it.

Secondly, I can't watch any video without it taking over my recommendations. Alex Jones for example. I still haven't watched an Alex Jones video (I was curious about what rubbish he spews), without worrying that I'll get a bunch of delusional hyper-conservative drivel taking over my recommendations.

There should be a way to watch a video once and not have it take over your recommendations.

On the one hand, we find that we're making great strides in certain areas with ML. On the other hand, recommendation systems are still just so, so, so naive and bad.

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What do you want them to do? I'm an adult who uses YouTube and I don't want sanitized kid-friendly recommendations just so that you can protect your son's eyes from cartoon violence. In fact, several of the creators I like have been pinched hard by changes to the All-Powerful Algorithm which seem to be deliberately de-emphasizing anything that could be remotely considered offensive, and it's not fair to them at all.

There should be a "parental controls" toggle.

YouTube Kids is a separate app. Does that not suffice?

No, YouTube Kids has the same problem. Content on it isn't really vetted in any way.

Have you used YouTube Kids recently? You can set it to "Approved Only Mode" which only allows kids to view human-vetted videos.

That's good to hear!

How about employing 10 people of this massive platform to curate some channels that people can easily subscribe to? It could literally be advertised to be kids-friendly and not dumb etc.

Employ human curated collections, no algorithms. There is simply no other way that guaranteed kid-friendly content will exist in a space. Otherwise people will game the algorithms and you get Elsa-gate.

I’ve talked about this before, but if you have kids, the only surefire solution is curating the videos yourself and downloading them. Then playing them offline. Anything else is a gamble, which may or may not be the route you want to take.

YT cracking down on videos also has a lot to do with skittish advertisers. I’m not sure if a solution is possible other than utilizing Patreon, librepay, etc. Even if you don’t make “controversial” content, that’s what most people do these days for consistency, as well as merchandise.

YouTube Kids is a separate app and it has an option to only allow human-vetted videos. From the support site:

"In this setting, your child will only be able to watch videos, channels and collections that you have hand-picked. Collections are videos and channels grouped by topics, such as science and music, picked by the YouTube Kids teams or our partners."

Sorry to be so cynical, but I do not trust youtube whatsoever. Do you trust random "partners" of youtube? I don't.

YT has proven themselves incapable time and time again when it comes to dealing with human support and services. I cannot read PR text from them and just believe it.

If you delete a video from your Youtube watch history, it doesn't get used for recommendations anymore.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725?hl=en

My anecdotal experience agrees. I cleared my watch history and then all my recommendations changed from being tech related to more pop culture oriented for a few weeks

Unless you have history disabled entirely.

Why can't we opt out completely from "recommendations"?

Its a Lie. I have YT watch history disabled for hmm 2 years now, recommendations "work" just the same.

Disabling it != Removing a single item from the list.

" When you pause history, any videos that you watch while history is paused won't show in history and won’t be used to improve your recommendations."

is a lie

>> There should be a way to watch a video once and not have it take over your recommendations.

Log out.

You can't log out of the YouTube Android app anymore. There's only an incognito mode.

Don't use the app

Newpipe

Or if you want the official experience: https://vanced.app

Even if you logout, your anonymous session has its own set of recommendations. No?

Disable cookies

you will get served "interests shared by users from that particular IP", google helpfully assuming its a single household.

Yeah, those Tom & Jerry cartoons are HORRIBLE.

Thanks for sharing your personal opinion about videos you've never watched.

Nobody needs to watch an Alex Jones video to have an opinion on the man. He is a garbage person who spreads lies and propaganda. This isn't an opinion, this is Jones' own admission in court of what his program represents.

Yeah, and similarly nobody needed to bring him up in this thread at all. But don't think too hard about that.

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