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Comment by rvanmil | Hacker News Reader

There is a bigger problem here and that is a lot of parents either ignore or simply don’t see the problem. Friends think I’m weird because I carefully curate apps for my 3yo son and have banned youtube. This problem also exists on iOS but I don’t think it’s as bad as described in this article. I’ve realised quite a while ago that Google really doesn’t give a shit about your kids being confronted with inappropriate content.

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I'm only 24 and I'm already afraid of how I'll manage technology consumption once I have kids. Unfortunately your friends are naive, the problem you're trying to solve for your 3yo is one of most important problems parents are facing right now in the digital age (I believe it to be so big because most people like your friends aren't aware of the repercussions).

My wife and I both have Andoid phones. Whenever we get a new device removing YouTube is the first thing we do. We have a small list of paid puzzle games we install. And for the limited video time the kids get PBS Video which is great. We don't let the kids watch Netflix or any other video apps because their "kids" programming is absolute garbage if not openly hostile toward children.

You're not weird.

I just installed PBS Video on my iPhone and opened up my pi-hole to see what types of DNS requests it was making. Among regular PBS domains are:

* ssl.google-analytics.com (tracking)

* pagead2.googlesyndication.com (a google ad domain)

* pubads.g.doubleclick.net (another google ad domain)

* sb.scorecardresearch.com (tracking)

* imasdk.googleapis.com (The Google IMA SDK for ads within a video)

* localization.services.pbs.org (perhaps this one is benign)

From their Privacy Policy [1]:

> We also may share aggregated or anonymized information with third parties, including to help us develop content and services that we hope you or your child will find of interest or to help these third parties develop their own products and service offerings.

The above paragraph with the associated list of domains being used above screams targeting to me

> We may allow third parties to place and read their own cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies to collect information through the Services.

So they let 3rd parties do whatever they want. The full privacy policy is followed with an example use case of how its helpful and useful, but just like Facebook's privacy policy the examples are misdirection.

[1] https://pbskids.org/privacy/

You should point the people that let their kids watch unrestricted youtube to the articles about the content farms, or the trolls or whoever making disturbing versions of children's shows, or those that go into the bizarrely disturbing - pregnant Elsa, spider-man, err. Stuff like that.

And else just make them watch finger family videos for hours.

YouTube is so incredibly shit house these days.

There are a few interesting channels, but otherwise I may as well be watching regular tv. The suggestions I get are also incredibly bad.

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