Sure you could blame the parents complacency or whatever but where do you draw the line? What happens if someone causes a scene that scares my kid when we are at a restaurant? Or walking him to school? You can't predicte the actions of every arsehole in communal spaces so blaming this stuff on the parents is more than a little unfair then society owes a little responsibility for its own actions as well.
But as I also said before, if these shock videos were just bad knock offs etc that a quick watch when the kids aren't around highlights their content, then I suspect YouTube would have found it easier to train their AI. The problem is some of those videos even get past parent moderation as well (such as the one I described above) and thus don't become apparent as a shock video until the damage has already been done.
Where it doesn't work is cases like your friend where a single unexpected event can cause a lot of harm. But most of these videos aren't that, they're just mildly "disturbing". If anything, they're a good warning that worse things might be coming.
And I don't believe no one should be blamed. I believe the blame lies heavily with the uploaders of those videos because they're deliberately releasing content that they know isn't suitable for children in a way that is intended to lure children into watching it. Sure there will be instances where the parents are also at fault for not overseeing what their kids watch. I'm not in anyway trying to shift responsibility away from the parents. However while I'm one of the biggest advocates for free speech and all that jazz, ultimately if you're creating content that you know is inappropriate for children then you should not be targeting children with said content. Period.