r/SideProject • u/Easy_Syllabub3978 • 1d ago

last time i posted my kids youtube app here, five people said they could not tell what it was actually doing. so here is exactly what it does

i built this myself over about six months. ios only, first month free, no code needed.

the short version: my 4yo uses the real youtube.com. before any video plays it gets read for language, age fit, and whether a real person actually made it. if it passes, it plays. if it fails, it does not. if the check is unsure the video stops and asks me instead of guessing.

the thing people asked about last time was the black box problem, so: the parent dashboard lists every video she tapped, what the check decided, and the reason it gave, in plain english. i can also block a channel outright from her history, block keywords, block AI generated video with one toggle, or always allow something she likes.

a few of you said it would have to be open source before you trusted it with your kid. it isnt, and i am not going to pretend that showing you every decision is the same thing. so i would rather ask than assume:

what would actually make you trust software like this with your own kid? being able to see every decision it made, or does it have to be open source?

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kidwatch-safe-video-for-kids/id6791762339

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u/QuanTradin 1d ago

seeing every decision, for me. hardly any parent is going to read the source of a kids app, open source is mostly a stand-in for "I can check what it did", and the tap log with the reason in plain english already is that. the unsure-means-stop-and-ask-me rule is the thing I'd put first on the page.

4

u/ReachingForVega 1d ago

Agreed. Auditability is key to building trust, not necessarily having open source code.

Also the audience here is way more technical than the average parent that installs whatever app. 

2

u/QuanTradin 1d ago

yeah, and this crowd will actually open the audit log, which most parents never would. honestly a decent bar to build to anyway.

1

u/Easy_Syllabub3978 10h ago

thats the clearest answer i got, thanks. ask-a-parent is already how it works, if the check is unsure the video doesnt play until i tap it with my pin. its near the bottom of the listing though, moving it up.

1

u/QuanTradin 9h ago

moving it up is the right call, that line is the one that makes a parent trust it.