We banned shorts some time last year. Well, I say banned, my kid reluctantly agreed to stop watching them and has stuck to it. I found it was too hard to monitor the content, some randomly inappropriate things would appear but there are just so many of them it was too difficult to know what he was watching. I actually don't like YouTube at all and would far rather he was playing a video game or watching a real programme. I especially don't like it when he puts them on high speed and you just hear this silly chipmunk voice rattling on about some total drivel. I don't think he watches much in the AI slop area but some human created videos are just as 'empty'. A YouTuber reacting to a pile of other videos for instance, or someone recapping the entire plot of an anime series my kid has never seen.
Honestly I hope they roll this out for adults! Adding infinite scroll vertical video to every platform under the sun is peak enshittification. My current solution is to buy an $80 brick and use it to block any app with infinite scroll vertical video for the majority of the day.
I don't know if I'm alone in this but I'm far more concerned about that than AI slop. If only because I can feel those feature just take a wrecking ball to my ability to concentrate, and are just incredibly moreish. AI slop seems sort of diffuse at this point, its not completely obvious to me why I'm meant to be more worried about that than other terrible computer generated content. At least as a parent.
I’m more concerned about problematic AI videos where my daughter’s favorite characters are either getting pregnant, getting bullied, or are in violent situations. AI makes the characters look very polished and on-model. I don’t have a problem with AI generated content in general but the child safety measures for YouTube seem really loose for a kid’s account.
Locking off Shorts may be imperfect, but it's far and away the worst source of junk I see my kid stumbling into, and I recently installed a "productivity/focus" plugin half because it would let me block Shorts entirely. So I'm pretty glad to see this added as a native feature (partly because the 3rd-party options are always at risk of breaking when YouTube pushes a frontend update.)
We banned shorts some time last year. Well, I say banned, my kid reluctantly agreed to stop watching them and has stuck to it. I found it was too hard to monitor the content, some randomly inappropriate things would appear but there are just so many of them it was too difficult to know what he was watching. I actually don't like YouTube at all and would far rather he was playing a video game or watching a real programme. I especially don't like it when he puts them on high speed and you just hear this silly chipmunk voice rattling on about some total drivel. I don't think he watches much in the AI slop area but some human created videos are just as 'empty'. A YouTuber reacting to a pile of other videos for instance, or someone recapping the entire plot of an anime series my kid has never seen.
Honestly I hope they roll this out for adults! Adding infinite scroll vertical video to every platform under the sun is peak enshittification. My current solution is to buy an $80 brick and use it to block any app with infinite scroll vertical video for the majority of the day.
I don't know if I'm alone in this but I'm far more concerned about that than AI slop. If only because I can feel those feature just take a wrecking ball to my ability to concentrate, and are just incredibly moreish. AI slop seems sort of diffuse at this point, its not completely obvious to me why I'm meant to be more worried about that than other terrible computer generated content. At least as a parent.
Not a terrible idea. It's not a format I spend much time on but I get why people end up down that hole.
I’m more concerned about problematic AI videos where my daughter’s favorite characters are either getting pregnant, getting bullied, or are in violent situations. AI makes the characters look very polished and on-model. I don’t have a problem with AI generated content in general but the child safety measures for YouTube seem really loose for a kid’s account.
I think that's fair. I haven't seen anything personally like that, but given the history of YouTube it's absolutely a valid concern.
The AI slop will continue until morale improves.
:(
Locking off Shorts may be imperfect, but it's far and away the worst source of junk I see my kid stumbling into, and I recently installed a "productivity/focus" plugin half because it would let me block Shorts entirely. So I'm pretty glad to see this added as a native feature (partly because the 3rd-party options are always at risk of breaking when YouTube pushes a frontend update.)
Agreed! Hoping for some more granular options going forward. I'm kinda surprised they added it at all, tbh. I do not expect them to promote it.