>> Apps that include children in their target audience need to adhere to our new policy requirements including appropriate content, showing suitable ads (learn more), and disclosing personally identifiable information correctly.<p>so youtube kids would be a flagrant violation of their new policy. why do they keep recommending this app to me? shouldn't it just be demonitized like they do to countless devs for unstated reasons.<p>Google has less than zero trust stored and they should probably learn that this means they will lose money (sooner or later).
I'm wondering if there is any protection to changing the google account and/or resetting the phone by the child. My daughter got as far as reinstalling MacOS to get around parental controls, at which point I gave up trying to use software to limit her screen time.
The way easier solution to this content rating mess is don’t give your young child a phone/tablet. Give them a coloring book and a Snap Circuits kit.<p>I realize this isn’t something Google can do something about; this is directed at the parents giving an internet connected device to a developing mind.
Review times will increase to up to 7 days. My impression was that most app reviews on Google Play are automated and do not involve humans.<p>Will Google begin to have every single kids app release go through a human reviewer?
While the content ist laudable, did they really just announce that starting September 1st, devs should plan ahead due to extended review times - and make the announcement on August 30?
I don't envy parents trying to navigate this issue these days. It seems completely reasonable for Google to try to help them figure it out by providing some information.
Safer for families? How about not advertising to children whose decision making process is very much compromised, in not being formed yet? Any attempt to claim they are making things "safer" is simply lip service to a cause that they, by design, are not in favour of. My children will not be watching commercial TV nor having access to "smart" devices unless things radically change (and hopefully I can stick to it).
While the deeper review is fine, Why wasn’t this better planned with more resources allocated to the review process to keep the time in 2-3 days. And when I submitted my game - Word Hookup -for internal testing it took 8 days for approval. Why should internal testing require this prolonged review. 7 days for internal testing is a painful and unacceptable waste of devs time.
Sounds like Google is the one not following a certain policy called federal law....costing it $200M.<p>It's a bit like Face#### getting preachy about user privacy.
Not related to the article as much as related to google decisions and android in relation to 'families' aka kids and parents..<p>the parental controls for time that phone went off and was available for better then nothing.. but at 14th birthday all parental control and oversight is removed.<p>I've searched a bit, and found that maybe Disney Circle is the thing closest to what is needed in situations that I have experienced and seen others try to contend with.
'popcorn time' comes to mind as an app that was widely mentioned when searching for the right controls - from what I remember some things with that fell short.
I remember some discussions about an openDNS or similar 'open-souce' dns poisoning service that was similar and competing with disney circle - but when I went to try it out I felt that is was not going to work well and I may not get it to function at all from the docs I saw.<p>Anyhow, I really want an open source / free alternative the gives parents some controls and clearly explains to teens what is being controlled...
I think all parents need the ability to turn off certain apps, or turn off all apps aside from a whitelist of apps that could be available when the others are turned off.<p>Phones are tricky today in that we want to limit the access to the games at times, but may want to keep access to a phone app like grooveip or google voice.<p>whether it's bed time or dinner time, I think many of us want to limit some apps but allow other functions, like actually being a phone to still work / be accessible.<p>I know some parents want to monitor all discussions, that may be a fine choice - but whatever other monitoring may be available, I'd like the kids to have notices about the monitoring.. from parents, from apps, from govments..<p>While I'm pouring out mu wishlist here, I want an app that monitors for 'bad words lists )editable and subscribable ) - so that a notice can be sent to parents if words like suicide or kill are detected via text or audio.. but not send entire conversations to parents to pry into every detail, and likely miss important things by getting too much data.<p>In short, I think google's decision to remove all parental oversight at 13 is not good, and affordable options for better monitoring are not available at the moment - and we should do more and better.<p>While I'm wishlisting, why the hale don't we have auto detection for curse words in youtube videos (and some other words) and the ability to censor them with beeps or silence - some of the gaming youtubers may be entertaining enough to watch but some of the language that is used so much that it injects itself into the daily vocab of kids like an overplayed rap song is too much. Youtube has the power and code already there for transcribing, it could do this kind of thing easy right?<p>I have one step-kid that will not use youtube on phone at all do the kids only version at 12 1/2 years old.. and another over 13 that watches so much I worry and wonder.