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In the TV space, there's been, for 30 years (and mandatory in all new TVs in the US for the past 25), the V-Chip [1], which was specifically designed to be able

In the TV space, there's been, for 30 years (and mandatory in all new TVs in the US for the past 25), the V-Chip [1], which was specifically designed to be able to let parents disable viewing of inappropriate content. So it's not like the government hasn't gone down this path before. I suspect the issue is that the user-side voluntary disabling of access means that--like with the V-Chip--almost no one will go about doing it, and that for many of the people trying to push for porn site restrictions, the side effect of forcing porn sites to close down is actually a desirable effect. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-chip

LinuxBender 2y ago
Yup I remember the V-Chip. That was similar but just different enough that it made more sense that it never took off. That would have required adding a module to all televisions that would incur cost and would have also changed which entities in the television industry had control over their content. That industry has always been plagued by layers of bureaucracy. The internet on the other than has let website operators have more freedom to govern themselves with some exceptions. I think in this case implementing RTA headers while it would have some cost it is leveraging existing code, web and load balancing platforms and just bringing back header checks in applications which many apps already know how to do and then calling the parental checks that also already exist in many devices and in some cases the UI is just hidden.
ars 2y ago
They had this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_Selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_... But it was bashed as a "censoring system", and now we have nothing.
- LinuxBender 2y ago
  RTA is what deprecated PICS. PICS was far too complicated once they realized trying to create all the categories was going to be impossible to fit into a single header and user-driven-content would be far too dynamic for categories and severity to make sense. PICS would have made more sense if all websites were operator driven and did not permit user generated content. RTA keeps it simpler in that "this may contain content not suitable for children". Just enough to trigger parental controls.

LinuxBender 2y ago

Yup I remember the V-Chip. That was similar but just different enough that it made more sense that it never took off. That would have required adding a module to all televisions that would incur cost and would have also changed which entities in the television industry had control over their content. That industry has always been plagued by layers of bureaucracy. The internet on the other than has let website operators have more freedom to govern themselves with some exceptions. I think in this case implementing RTA headers while it would have some cost it is leveraging existing code, web and load balancing platforms and just bringing back header checks in applications which many apps already know how to do and then calling the parental checks that also already exist in many devices and in some cases the UI is just hidden.

ars 2y ago

They had this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_Selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_... But it was bashed as a "censoring system", and now we have nothing.

LinuxBender 2y ago
RTA is what deprecated PICS. PICS was far too complicated once they realized trying to create all the categories was going to be impossible to fit into a single header and user-driven-content would be far too dynamic for categories and severity to make sense. PICS would have made more sense if all websites were operator driven and did not permit user generated content. RTA keeps it simpler in that "this may contain content not suitable for children". Just enough to trigger parental controls.