Adult content

[Todd Slater]

On Fri, Jul 01, 2005 at 08:25:25AM -0400, Jack Jackson wrote:
> Dennis Kaarsemaker wrote:
> >On do, 2005-06-30 at 21:15 -0400, Jack Jackson wrote:
> >
> >
> >>My point was entirely this:
> >>
> >>At the end of the day, avoidance of smut and violence depends on the 
> >>user, and my suggestion was not that the poster had not provided
> >>ethics and passed on his values, but rather those activities were more
> >>effective than any technology.
> >
> >
> >Of course, but a proxy or block can (and will) help protecting against
> >accidental 'bad pages' such as porn popups that you see everywhere, or
> >the fact that almost all sites with 'fun' in the somain name seem to
> >have an assiciation with (soft) porn.
> 
> The "fact"? Have you truly researched that statement? I mean, really! 
> Thank you for illustrating so perfectly my point. 
> http://www.sun-n-fun.org/ is the website of the second largest aviation 
> gathering on earth, held annually in Lakeland, FL Yes, it's truly sexy 
> to see the flight line, but not so much I'd want to stop my five year 
> old from seeing it. http://www.funbrain.com/ is on my son's bookmark 
> list. It's a popular  eductional site. Disney online runs 
> http://familyfun.go.com/ . http://funlol.com/ has lots of corny but 
> clean jokes... They're dumb, but I wouldn't ban them. Shall we actually 
> continue this?
> 
> >Of course ethics and moral are better than technology for protecting
> >children, but I even use a squid myself to get rid of annoying (porn)
> >popups. So please don't judge people for being a little protective. The
> >internet, like the real world, can be an unfriendly environment.
> 
> I'm not being judgemental in the slightest, I am pointing out that these 
> programs are ineffective and unreliable. If only because they make broad 
> generalizations to "protect" you.
> 
> You know, like, "Let's stop everyone from looking at domains with the 
> word 'fun' in them."

I think what we're missing here is that technology is *one* of the tools
parents can use to protect their kids. People jumped in and made
assumptions about the OP. Anybody who's ever worked with children has
probably had the experience of being confronted with unexpected adult
content. While teaching an HTML class I had a sixth-grader that tried to
access a beanie babies site and was confronted with hardcore porn and a
billion pop-ups with like content were spawned. A sixth-grader is probably
mature enough to handle that intrusion, but would a third grader be?

If you don't believe porn-napping happens and/or that it is a problem,
just google it: http://www.google.com/search?q=porn+napping. (45,100
hits)

So yes, education is key, but an app like Dan's Guardian can complement
that. It may not be perfect, but if it saves my child from inappropriate
content even 5 out of 10 times, it's worth it to me.

(As an aside, I once participated in a study to test the effectiveness
of content filters for use in K-12 schools. I wanted to try DG because
everybody else was using commercial software. DG ended up being the most
effective at blocking adult content. The problem was it was *too* effective;
if I searched for cheerleader on google, it wouldn't even display the
results page because of the content, so I couldn't even view the results to
visit a legitimate site. That was with the out-of-the box settings on
Mandrake 9.1, which IIRC was aimed at the youngest users.)

> Can we move on ... please?

Yes.

Cheers,
Todd