As a parent I really like googles family controls, all of it. Except ONE thing.. I cannot block or limit YouTube Shorts.
Whenever my daughter watches regular YouTube there's a good chance she might watch something creative or educational or something that ends up with her suddenly making something out of paper, or drawing or anything physical. Learning about something amazing and getting excited.
YouTube Shorts is just AI slop, and horrible content I wish never existed.
I use brave browser and block anything related to shorts. The sound still plays in the background but the videos don't play which makes it unenjoyable. Helped me give up shorts.
For phones. If you use the YT app (Or logged in I think). If you disable your watch history it removes the shorts. But I wish there was another way. I use Unhook browser plugin on my computer browser.
I am Australian, the state that we have become is just sad. The fact that this is brought under the disguise of "child protection" is ridiculous and I never would have imagine a future in my own country where I have to submit my ID to access anything online. They will never achieve anything with this because everyone will just use VPN. It's costing taxpayer's money without any useful outcome. The level of incompetence displayed by this government is astonishing.
We need to simply take away children's access to the unfiltered internet, and we need this to be done by local device parental controls - children get iPhones that allow only a whitelisted part of the internet. We adults need to enforce it and make it a social norm, like you don't buy cigarettes for kids. Then this mass surveillance "for the children" concept can go away, and also the children really shouldn't be exposed to certain information, which we all know it when we see it, until they are old enough.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 22.5 ms ] threadWhenever my daughter watches regular YouTube there's a good chance she might watch something creative or educational or something that ends up with her suddenly making something out of paper, or drawing or anything physical. Learning about something amazing and getting excited.
YouTube Shorts is just AI slop, and horrible content I wish never existed.