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I have kids and try very hard to keep them from inappropriate material online. The real dangers aren’t dedicated porn sites, but poorly managed social media si

I have kids and try very hard to keep them from inappropriate material online. The real dangers aren’t dedicated porn sites, but poorly managed social media sites. You can’t just block the domain. In many cases, the bad material comes from peers. Kids have always talked about “bad” things, but the internet super charges it. I generally support these efforts, but I’m also very cynical they help. Politicians focus on the problems they control, like rules for sites that rigorously follow the laws and fit in a clear category. They care far less about the grey areas where the most harm is often done. I think this is a good thing. I’d feel a lot better if these efforts were combined with rigorous privacy protections. For example, third party identity verification services should be civilly liable for privacy breeches, and required to carry insurance to meet the obligations.

theschmed 1y ago
I tend to think that this challenge posed by "mixed" domains, partly unobjectionable but partly inappropriate, will only become more prevalent. A couple of thoughts: 1. Filtering at the DNS level will never be enough. You'll always need to have the capability for the browser or user agent to do filtering, since the user agent has the context to know the full URI as well as other things needed for filtering. The OS admin (parent, school IT admin etc) will need to be able to block all user agents except the ones that have the reporting and filtering capabilities tuned to the admin's requirements. This is the direction Windows is heading, but it is very rough. 2. I wonder if more domains could do what Google, Bing, Youtube etc do and permit a safe version to be requested at the DNS level. I personally would like to be able to do so with Reddit, Twitter and more.
- pyuser583 1y ago
  The absolute worst domain for mixed content is google.com. Google has it's own internal internet. Searching for inappropriate images on Google images (using "safe" terms), and downloading the cached image is a powerful workaround. Ok, there are a few worse ones. But it's pretty bad.
Canada 1y ago
You pretty much have to whitelist. I think we're heading towards a future where we give kids only devices that restrict internet access to known good content. There's more than enough known good content out there already to keep kids occupied until they come of age. There will be managed whitelists that your kids can access, which sites must apply for and demonstrate compliance with the policy of, and you will be able to trust, so that you or other guardians in your family don't have to manage the minutia, which is effectively impossible for you to handle. And your children will be able to access only these, and any other exception that you personally whitelist them to have. And we other adults won't let kids, yours or anyone else's, have open access through us as proxies, just as we won't buy them cigarettes or alcohol if they asked us, because we all agree doing so is wrong. And we will have punishments for those who break this rule, just like we have had for generations for pre-internet vices. We won't need to bother trying to censor the whole internet anymore. We'll just take away children's unlimited unsupervised access to it, just as we have come to a social and legal consensus to exclude them from other parts of the physical world we all agree they are not ready to handle. I predict this will happen, major device makers like Apple will lead it, and everyone will eventually agree it is appropriate and in best interests of everyone.
- kyleee 1y ago
  Back to curation, back to whitelisted web rings, yes I think this is the only option
  - pyuser583 1y ago
    Nope. Schools require Google Classroom, and that contains workarounds. Some of the worst stuff I've seen was via Google Classroom.
    - msgodel 1y ago
      Heh. This among other reasons is why parents who care a lot put so much effort into homeschooling or so much money into private school. It would be nice to have sane defaults but when you have so many people with so many opinions that's not really possible.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

theschmed 1y ago

I tend to think that this challenge posed by "mixed" domains, partly unobjectionable but partly inappropriate, will only become more prevalent. A couple of thoughts: 1. Filtering at the DNS level will never be enough. You'll always need to have the capability for the browser or user agent to do filtering, since the user agent has the context to know the full URI as well as other things needed for filtering. The OS admin (parent, school IT admin etc) will need to be able to block all user agents except the ones that have the reporting and filtering capabilities tuned to the admin's requirements. This is the direction Windows is heading, but it is very rough. 2. I wonder if more domains could do what Google, Bing, Youtube etc do and permit a safe version to be requested at the DNS level. I personally would like to be able to do so with Reddit, Twitter and more.

pyuser583 1y ago
The absolute worst domain for mixed content is google.com. Google has it's own internal internet. Searching for inappropriate images on Google images (using "safe" terms), and downloading the cached image is a powerful workaround. Ok, there are a few worse ones. But it's pretty bad.

Canada 1y ago

You pretty much have to whitelist. I think we're heading towards a future where we give kids only devices that restrict internet access to known good content. There's more than enough known good content out there already to keep kids occupied until they come of age. There will be managed whitelists that your kids can access, which sites must apply for and demonstrate compliance with the policy of, and you will be able to trust, so that you or other guardians in your family don't have to manage the minutia, which is effectively impossible for you to handle. And your children will be able to access only these, and any other exception that you personally whitelist them to have. And we other adults won't let kids, yours or anyone else's, have open access through us as proxies, just as we won't buy them cigarettes or alcohol if they asked us, because we all agree doing so is wrong. And we will have punishments for those who break this rule, just like we have had for generations for pre-internet vices. We won't need to bother trying to censor the whole internet anymore. We'll just take away children's unlimited unsupervised access to it, just as we have come to a social and legal consensus to exclude them from other parts of the physical world we all agree they are not ready to handle. I predict this will happen, major device makers like Apple will lead it, and everyone will eventually agree it is appropriate and in best interests of everyone.

kyleee 1y ago
Back to curation, back to whitelisted web rings, yes I think this is the only option
- pyuser583 1y ago
  Nope. Schools require Google Classroom, and that contains workarounds. Some of the worst stuff I've seen was via Google Classroom.
  - msgodel 1y ago
    Heh. This among other reasons is why parents who care a lot put so much effort into homeschooling or so much money into private school. It would be nice to have sane defaults but when you have so many people with so many opinions that's not really possible.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]