Indeed, it is aggressively hostile. I thought setting up an allowlist of subscribed channels would be a simple ask. That plus an adblocker and job done, right? No, Google’s algorithm is what you get–despite your subscriptions you will get plenty of other things and they will push your kid towards some inappropriate things.

What I do instead is block YouTube on my kid’s devices and download selected videos to host on Jellyfin. It’s a bit of a pain and not legal, but much better than trying to monitor YouTube use.