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Comment by thorntonbf | Hacker News Reader

I realize that full curation probably isn't possible as this thing scales, but as a parent, this thing will live or die based on the content they allow into the stream.

I love watching videos of people building stuff with my kids. Moreover, I love watching the creativeness that some of the videos inspire in my kids. Unfortunately, to date, I have had to preview most of the content my children see on YouTube so that they don't either see a video review of something that's got the f-bomb every other word, or that the sidebar video recommendations don't bring up stuff that I really don't want my kid watching. And, to be clear, these are young kids.

In my mind, this is all about the content, the creators they allow into the system, and the curation of those two. I'd love to see an algorithmic way to accomplish some of this, but I expect on the front end, it'll require a lot of human filtering.

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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, kid-friendly publishers. They want to start off strong, with proven commodities, before opening the floodgates. There might also be a qualification process for new creators and publishers that is more rigorous than the process for all-purpose YouTube; that's just my speculation, though.

"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 word is "fuck" every time a player sees an aggro mob or their pick breaks or just for fun, which seems to be quite often. So again thats boring and no point discussing.

Whats interesting to discuss is in between. OMGchad is about 99.9% G rated but when he gets really, really frustrated, like once every ten episodes, out comes "damn it" and my wife says "language, change the video" and I laugh because my wife says worse stuff than OMGchad and my son is going to be driving a car in a couple years and voting in a couple more and probably on 4chan etc and from my own memory of being his age I suspect he is quite familiar with all the swear words yet behaves himself in public so all is well.

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? And I can see differing opinions, like a extreme fundamentalist being alot more worried about some Dawkins video than mere straight pr0n or something...

"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.

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.

I don't watch much on YouTube so they may already do some of this but it seems to me like this would be an easy problem to solve if they so desired. Add a rating system where the content creators rate themselves and an easy way for viewers to flag them as incorrectly rated. Add to that a confidence rating of how likely a video is correctly rated (based on number of views without flagging) and you could confidently let your kids view appropriately rated material.

Whats it rating and how badly will it get abused?

Imagine a youtube video of President Obama's October 2nd 2002 speech on Iraq policy (not making this up, there is one...)

Or there's a classic nuclear winter / climate change-ish interview with Dr Carl Sagan right before he died in the early 90s.

Or any video that presents atheism or islam in a non-negative light. Say, a BBC interview with Richard Dawkins WRT his biographical book.

I suspect they'll be more than a little political gaming going on here, although theoretically a kid doing schoolwork could stumble upon them as a legitimate primary(ish) source.

What you describe is already supported, though it looks like it's only available for paid videos or channels (anyone can set whether or not a video of theirs is "mature" and should be age-restricted, however). The rating levels are listed here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/146399

And instructions for creators to set ratings is described here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/176714

There's probably an app-idea in there. Maybe an app that costs video creators some small amount, say $5, that gets their video in a "for-kids" video app. The $5 pays to have your video reviewed and tagged so that parents can filter what they want their kid to see.

As a parent, I would definitely pay for that app/service.

Agreed, not a parent but my nieces love youtube and I’m pretty sure my sister would pay for this too

So... what does the video creator get out of it? Once you've got an actual monetary barrier in place, they're not going to pay for their videos to be shown just for fun.

They get their video in front of kids that otherwise wouldn't be allowed to see it. The video can still play normal youtube ads to make them money.

It might be possible to automate it! Google keeps posting these incredible recognition results. Perhaps they can apply it to the video/audio looking for items it has trained it to be inappropriate?

This is what Curiosity.com is aiming to do.

Disclaimer: I work there.

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