3 ms·

The government will decide what is safe of not. There already are ratings for movies, for example "General Audiences" rating.

polski-g 3y ago
Those movie ratings are not performed by the government.
- codedokode 3y ago
  Probably they are made to comply with some laws or regulations (or to avoid being regulated by laws), so the government has a say here anyway.
  - polski-g 3y ago
    It would be unconstitutional for the government to regulate film content. So no.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      Agreed. It's really only based on a focus group of various audiences and surveys on what parents (dis)agree regarding certain content and how old you should be to view it. The closest thing to government intervention is the FCC, since the govt. does have some regulations on how TV and Radio can run (since the govt. infrastructure is used to broadcast). e.g.: >Broadcasting obscene content is prohibited by law at all times of the day. Indecent and profane content are prohibited on broadcast TV and radio between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience. So the only things really controlled are profanity (i.e. a relatively tiny list of words you must not say or bleep out) and "obscenity" (feel free to look up that govt. definition. Enjoy the rabbit hole). As for "indecency" >Indecent content portrays sexual or excretory organs or activities in a way that is patently offensive but does not meet the three-prong test for obscenity. so, not really much for radio. Mostly prevents non-artistic/educational genitalia for TV's sake. ----- but all that was a tangent. The internet is not under FCC protocol and the FCC only endorses certain advertising, spam, and malware related issues, not content.
dotnet00 3y ago
You keep repeating this, but those ratings are not government issued and are not all that useful when it comes to general information. A movie can be made to be sufficiently sanitized for the target audience as there's plenty of flexibility in the topic and objectivity is often just a secondary goal. Eg since the movie is targeted at families, it'll avoid explicit depictions of sex. On the other hand, you can't just change the reality of what a scientific article on sexual reproduction is going to show, yet that information is not necessarily problematic for people under 18 to access (and of course you'll have a hard time balancing what is socially healthy with what is acceptable to parents). On top of all that though, we don't need to make even more things be behind this absurd age gate. I remember how ridiculous it felt turning 18, going from legally being a child to being a mostly free adult just on a specific day, despite obviously not having suddenly changed as a person in 1 day and having already been living independently at university thousands of miles away from home. Same again upon turning 21. This idea of sharp limits defined by age is just an intellectually lazy approach which is not how we should be treating access to general information for a fifth of a person's life. Tech companies love this kind of intellectual laziness, and similar thinking is responsible for why said tech companies are responsible for so many current social issues.
- gs17 3y ago
  I wouldn't even worry about how useful the rating systems are, I'd worry about how arbitrary they are even if you accept their standards. E.g. the "one fuck" rule for PG-13 films, except a film like The Martian can say it twice without being rated R because the raters vote on what they think American parents would think about the film in that case.
- ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago
  I would rather have a generative device that fakes all content but steers the user into topics and ideas that would be a positive influence. Done dealing with unfilteres 3rd parties as they are always not to be trusted. Generate everything
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    The generative devices would be made by third parties, so you're still trusting them.
oxygen_crisis 3y ago
"The government will decide what is safe or not" is an extremely frightening phrase to me when it comes to issues of morality. I recognize the importance of having the government decide what foods are safe, what industrial byproducts are safe, and so forth when it comes to matters of objective science but when they start policing content like books and websites it starts stepping into some serious authoritarianism...
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  you'd think with various state governments deciding that "gay marriage isn't safe" and some of the more extreme governments deciding that "critical race theory isn't appropriate" (you know, stuff like the entire civil war and why it was fought. "state's rights" my ass. I learned the basis of that in 3rd/4th grade. I learned about MLK in 1st/2nd grade) that we'd be wary of such lines of thought. Games and movies avoid that with self-regulation for a reason. Having the govt. decide what social media is appropriate is outright censorship (and not the kind the gamers love to complain about. Literal government suppression of information).

polski-g 3y ago

Those movie ratings are not performed by the government.

codedokode 3y ago
Probably they are made to comply with some laws or regulations (or to avoid being regulated by laws), so the government has a say here anyway.
- polski-g 3y ago
  It would be unconstitutional for the government to regulate film content. So no.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    Agreed. It's really only based on a focus group of various audiences and surveys on what parents (dis)agree regarding certain content and how old you should be to view it. The closest thing to government intervention is the FCC, since the govt. does have some regulations on how TV and Radio can run (since the govt. infrastructure is used to broadcast). e.g.: >Broadcasting obscene content is prohibited by law at all times of the day. Indecent and profane content are prohibited on broadcast TV and radio between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience. So the only things really controlled are profanity (i.e. a relatively tiny list of words you must not say or bleep out) and "obscenity" (feel free to look up that govt. definition. Enjoy the rabbit hole). As for "indecency" >Indecent content portrays sexual or excretory organs or activities in a way that is patently offensive but does not meet the three-prong test for obscenity. so, not really much for radio. Mostly prevents non-artistic/educational genitalia for TV's sake. ----- but all that was a tangent. The internet is not under FCC protocol and the FCC only endorses certain advertising, spam, and malware related issues, not content.

dotnet00 3y ago

You keep repeating this, but those ratings are not government issued and are not all that useful when it comes to general information. A movie can be made to be sufficiently sanitized for the target audience as there's plenty of flexibility in the topic and objectivity is often just a secondary goal. Eg since the movie is targeted at families, it'll avoid explicit depictions of sex. On the other hand, you can't just change the reality of what a scientific article on sexual reproduction is going to show, yet that information is not necessarily problematic for people under 18 to access (and of course you'll have a hard time balancing what is socially healthy with what is acceptable to parents). On top of all that though, we don't need to make even more things be behind this absurd age gate. I remember how ridiculous it felt turning 18, going from legally being a child to being a mostly free adult just on a specific day, despite obviously not having suddenly changed as a person in 1 day and having already been living independently at university thousands of miles away from home. Same again upon turning 21. This idea of sharp limits defined by age is just an intellectually lazy approach which is not how we should be treating access to general information for a fifth of a person's life. Tech companies love this kind of intellectual laziness, and similar thinking is responsible for why said tech companies are responsible for so many current social issues.

gs17 3y ago
I wouldn't even worry about how useful the rating systems are, I'd worry about how arbitrary they are even if you accept their standards. E.g. the "one fuck" rule for PG-13 films, except a film like The Martian can say it twice without being rated R because the raters vote on what they think American parents would think about the film in that case.
ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago
I would rather have a generative device that fakes all content but steers the user into topics and ideas that would be a positive influence. Done dealing with unfilteres 3rd parties as they are always not to be trusted. Generate everything
- JohnFen 3y ago
  The generative devices would be made by third parties, so you're still trusting them.

oxygen_crisis 3y ago

"The government will decide what is safe or not" is an extremely frightening phrase to me when it comes to issues of morality. I recognize the importance of having the government decide what foods are safe, what industrial byproducts are safe, and so forth when it comes to matters of objective science but when they start policing content like books and websites it starts stepping into some serious authoritarianism...

johnnyanmac 3y ago
you'd think with various state governments deciding that "gay marriage isn't safe" and some of the more extreme governments deciding that "critical race theory isn't appropriate" (you know, stuff like the entire civil war and why it was fought. "state's rights" my ass. I learned the basis of that in 3rd/4th grade. I learned about MLK in 1st/2nd grade) that we'd be wary of such lines of thought. Games and movies avoid that with self-regulation for a reason. Having the govt. decide what social media is appropriate is outright censorship (and not the kind the gamers love to complain about. Literal government suppression of information).