Slashdot Mirror
Politicians Target Social Sites For Restrictions
cnet-declan writes "Politicians are looking for reasons to convince citizens to vote in November, and polls say suburban parents are worried about the internet. Wednesday top House Republicans announced a bill to make 'social' Web sites unreachable from schools and libraries. The bill is intended to go after MySpace, but the actual text of the legislation covers sites that let users 'create profiles' and have a 'forum' for conversations -- which would include Slashdot and many blog sites. House Speaker Dennis Hastert claims it's necessary to stop 'dangerous predators' out here on the Interweb."
Most teenagers i've met in the internet in "social sites" (i mean forums) have problems about abortion, parents beating them (or telling them that they're worthless), depression, anorexia, suicide problems, drugs... (you should read more teenager blogs , people). And I'm not talking about 18 or 19 yo's... I'm talking about people 15 years old in average.
Families are practically becoming prison camps for kids... and you're telling me that the greatest danger are sexual predators on the internet? Are you f*cking kidding me?
The problem isn't letting children on community driven sites.
The problem is a community driven site has no way to properly police and identify it's members.
I ran a community based website for 8 years where users could create profiles, message each other, participate in tree style board discussions and it became very popular with high school age children. I went through most of the steps that would have made the site COPPA compliant (though it was unneeded) using email based multi-opt in methods to verify the user. The site was policed regularly for content that would have been inappropriate for underage users, erring on the side of caution. I didn't regulate what users sent privately to each other, though there were jobs that ran on the backend that would watch for things that should send up a red flag (ie, adults talking about 'plane tickets' with minors). It wasn't perfect, and most of the time the flags were false positives that I just ignored. Users were aware of the monitoring and generally approved.
I shut the site down about 10-12 months ago because I couldn't handle dealing with the child predators anymore. One of my monitors had gone off and upon investigation I found not just one but three different adults (30+ males) that were all attempting to 'hook up' with girls 13-16... I am not in position to judge, make laws, or anything of that nature. However, this activity is explicitly not what I wanted on my site (and since all parties were in the US, they all were beneath the laws of this country and their respective states). I attempted reporting these activities to the states the individuals were from (California and Indiana in this instance), was given the run around for a while and eventually just told in a round about way that nothing I could submit or do would effect anything. No investigation, no extra monitoring, no research into these individuals who were quite knowingly breaking laws and endangering a child (from at least the law books perspective).
I searched for ways I could as a small website operator (~20000 members) validate a users identity. I figured I could at least prevent some of these activities if users knew without a doubt that their accounts were tied to their real identity (even if it was hidden to other users). I hit a brick wall. I could not find any means to accomplish this and queries on solutions were left unanswered (though my Ask Slashdot question is still in Pending state and has been for the last many months).
I don't see this issue as being something that laws preventing children from getting on these sites is the solution. I *do* however feel the schools should have the right to block access to any sites they don't deem as needed for the education process. I happily blocked access to my site on my side at the request of school administrators that didn't have the technical wherewithall to block it on their side. Social networking websites have as much place in a classroom as cell phones and instant messaging devices. So blocking them I approve of, but at the school administrations discretion.
My biggest point here is the problem: "Sexual predators preying on children" is not solved by their solution "Block access to myspace while at school and put the load on the site delivering the service, not on the site accessing the service".
Most social networking sites ignore the fact that they KNOW their sites are/will be used by predators. Some of us let the guilt get to us and shut down.
Yes, that's comforting....problem is, we're under it, and when it collapses, it's gonna hurt.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
How about we just put all minors in solitary confinement and carefully screen the guards? Then nobody could molest them, and parents wouldn't need to do a damn thing! And nobody's rights are violated, because minors aren't real people! Remember, it's not censorship if it's being done to someone else.
Depending on your viewpoint, it's rather creepy to "check in" with someone when you want to access "inappropriate" content at all. On the plus side, librarians, and the ALA in particular, are generally quite opposed to censorship of any kind. You can bet that they'll have something to say about this. Libraries already have all sorts of trouble being compliant with the very vague law that is CIPA, and this will only muddy the water further.
I found a very interesting article (linked to from the ALA website) that goes over the problems that libraries face with internet filtering. Make no mistake; they hate it. Particularly alarming is the librarian from Singapore that wasn't that concerned about censorship:
She casually replied, "Oh yes, we get overblocking all the time. Last week I was helping a patron look for motor vehicle forms but they were blocked, probably because it has a box to check for SEX 'Male/Female.'"
There was something about her casual tone that tripped me up. I usually hear librarians give overblocking examples in tones alternating between outrage, bitterness and amusement. I heard none of that in her voice. Just a relaxed answer, perhaps befitting our tranquil setting.
Nevertheless, I prodded, "As a librarian, doesn't that bother you?"
"No, not really," she said. Noticing the surprised look on my face, she continued, "You don't understand. Everything in Singapore is censored ... our books, our movies. You get used to it. Internet filters are nothing special."
This is purely redundant legislation to collect mindshare for an election year, and will only be used to restrict us further. Once people get used to it, they cease to care. It must be fought.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium