> if you've ever tried telling a toddler "no" you know how well that works long-term

Parent here. Acting like it’s impossible and you have no choice but to let them have their way is a cop-out. Telling kids “no” and enforcing boundaries is part of the job.

> my toddler is already on YouTube Kids.

> I will give you a simple experiment. Try blocking Blippi from YouTube Kids, man, it's crazy, even if you block the main Blippi and Moonbug channels. 100s of channels have Blippi content cross-posted

I have a better solution that I use: If I can’t stay involved enough to monitor what the kids are choosing to watch, I don’t let them loose watching YouTube. They get to go play outside or with LEGOs or do puzzles or any of the other countless activities that are fun for kids.

This isn’t a problem that is solved by creating advanced filtering that lets you block anything related to Blippi (whoever that is) isn’t going to solve the problems of letting your kids loose on YouTube. They’re going to find another cartoon you dislike. The solution is to parent, set boundaries, enforce them, and find other activities for them.

You're right that enforcing boundaries is the job. I'm not arguing otherwise. And yes, we do plenty of LEGOs and outside time.

I believe you're conflating two things: parenting discipline and product design. The question isn't whether I can physically take the TV away. I do.

When I say "block Blippi," I don't mean I dislike the content. I mean I'm done with screen time and the UX makes that transition harder than it needs to be. Autoplay is off, but the end-of-episode screen still shows a grid of next videos. Of course he wants the next one.

So I block Blippi. Except Blippi's main channel cross-posts through Moonbug into hundreds of other channels. It's a hydra

YouTube already does content fingerprinting for music industry DRM. The technology to let a parent say "block this creator everywhere, and let me turn it back on when I choose" exists today. They just haven't built it for parents. Because the system isn't designed for children. It's designed for engagement.

So yes, parental responsibility matters. But "just don't use it" isn't a scalable answer when the product is specifically engineered to undermine your choices. That's the design problem I'm talking about.