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OLPC Used to Browse Porn
youthoftoday writes "The OLPC project to bring the internet to third world has worked well — too well, it seems. Yahoo reports that Nigerian Children are already using the OLPC to browse for porn." This is why as kids we couldn't look at National Geographic issues without being supervised. A rep from OLPC said, understandably, that the laptops would now be fitted with filters.
I'd rather those Nigerian children would browse porn instead of sending out 419 emails.
It has been reported that the sun has risen in Nigeria today.
Analyst are in agreement that the sun will almost certainly rise again probably once each day for the next few weeks.
Also: filters? get a fucking clue.
How about instead we just use these internets to send the offending officials some biology texts so that can learn about human sexuality and stop trying to stifle it.
Seriously... who would've thought... Why was it reported at all? Maybe another title would be better - "Shocking revelation: Nigerian boys also want to see sex". I'm not surprised - are you? I'd say that great majority of males on the intertubes browsed porn sites at least once - keyword statistics from search engines seem to agree.
A rep from OLPC said, understandably, that the laptops would now be fitted with filters.
No, sorry, I do not understand. There's nothing evil about porn and those filter won't work anyway.
If they truly only blocked porn, then maybe it would be a matter of discussion, but certain filters' habit of censoring all sorts of irrelevant contents, political and otherwise really makes porn the lesser of the two evils.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
So its understandable that we will start enforcing our concept of morality on others right off the bat?
Remember, morality is relative.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Don't forget to export your morality with the laptops.
As much as I hate to say it. You're right.
If you start blocking porn because of its content (porn) then the people who have the power will demand other things be blocked too which leads to the Great Firewall of China problem... Except this one would be in Nigeria.
The internet was supposed to free everyone and allow them to think for themselves. Naturally those in power decide to try and force it into a tool for control just like everything else from Income Taxes to Drivers Licenses.
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
"A rep from OLPC said, understandably, that the laptops would now be fitted with filters."
I think they should also send out therapists. Those children will clearly be traumatised by viewing evil images of naked women.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
There is an AIDs issue to deal with here!
...
A question to ask: Does porn help promote AIDS with viewers or help to demote it?
Perhaps there is an age of threshold but that is something that should be determined by the current living environment.
So what is an indicator of that threshold? What gave the kids the idea of looking for porn on the internet in the first place? Seems to me the threshold was already passed before they looked for it on the internet.
I'm almost 50 years old and my email is filtered, not by my choice, such that I still get the porn promotion emails but the urls are changed to be random character strings. Whether or not I would access such sites is not the issue.
The issue is of censorship of what is in fact a part of human nature.
If you make something as natural as sex bad then you'll guarantee the typical rebellious teen age person will find a way. And maybe that way is such an act as to spread disease and unwanted pregnancies.
What can porn teach? proper safe sex? It can perhaps remove some level of curiosity
But porn or not, there is the natural human sex drive. Deny it and you'll have problems develop from ignorance and un-natural guilt. Such acts as rape included.
And how about the history of porn? What can it teach? The dangers of AIDs and other STDs?
If kids already know to look for porn on the internet, maybe its time the subject matter be properly addressed instead of being swept under the rug filter.
The biggest problem, the biggest contributing factor with the spread of AIDs in Africa, is ignorance.
Wait a minute, I live in Atlanta, I'm white...
Forget everything I said above.....
Is that all they can find to say about the OLPC. When was the last time you read a headline about schoolchildren viewing porn under MS Bisto? How about a story about an international news organization partnering up with US cable company's to deliver quality porn to cable and satellite subscribers. Here in Euroland we can always can rely on Murdochs Sky Adult channels.
Comcast cashing in on porn
AT&T porn channel challenged by religious investors
All we need now is OLPC contributes to a) terrorism, b) money laundering and c) contributes to third world poverty. Scratch the last one, its the GPL that does that, according to Jonathan Schwartz.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
On the whole you may be right. However, I do remember that one of the goals was to allow farmers and independent business people to access the internet to market their products worldwide and gather information regarding their occupation. Besides, with all the negative comments I've just read on /. regarding censorship, how would an isolated network of approved information be any different than applying filters? Add to that any complaints that poor countries are being held back from the internet and a separate network may not be worth the effort.
Just think... a generation of children in the third world will learn programming just in order to hack around the anti-porn filters.
Yeah, let those kids learn about unprotected ass-to-mouth sex. That'll keep the HIV rates down!
Let them learn about every kind of sex, stop treating sex and masturbation like freakish taboo abnoramalities and let them have open honest dialogue about sex. That will bring HIV rates down. Alot of guys in porns wear condoms. Nobody every got AIDS from masturbating. If (while they actually stay monogamous) they can close their eyes and fantasize about some porn starlet and that fulfills their natural male desire for a variety of partners, then that too will help control the spread of STDs. Maybe some men there will learn to appreciate women who have orgasims, and the practice of female circumcision will stop. All in all this will probably be a good thing.
We are all just people.
If anything, they are a better target for the OLPC, because these children can now get a better education to change their own government when their generation grows up.
You are making a fundamental assumption - that these children are able to think for themselves. Face it, they are not. They can be *influenced* by things, rather than influence them, either passively, or actively. This is (also obviously) because they aren't adults yet. Parents' education, school, etc. influences you in a way when you are little, as well.
And for the other posts that mention that filters are "censorship"... you're misguided. If these computers are meant for schooling, they are meant for schooling, not for porn. Kind of like not using a cell phone in a class at school: it is a matter of education. But I forgot, education as a concept died in 1968 in favor of unrestricted (as in not thinking things out, doing stuff just because you're able to) "freedom"...
A CC-licensed illustrated horror novel
I thought starting early was exactly how political indoctrination usually works. It's very hard to indoctrinate adults that have learned about whatever you want to keep from them, but if you get them while they are young and easy to affect, they won't know what they're missing out on.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
No, I'm one of the parents that feel its MY job to supervise what my child sees, not some corporate goon from another country.
Its my right to teach my child what i feel is right and wrong, not his.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Pornography is all about sexual fantasies. Most people don't have sex like the do on a porno movie. An impressionable children might come to believe that having sex like seen on a porno movie is the normal way of having it.
I'm not against nudity or teaching kids about sex, but it should be a balanced education about the facts and not just about some male fantasies.
Greets
MadMike
I would guess that was down to the personal preferences of each of the women.
Let them learn about every kind of sex, stop treating sex and masturbation like freakish taboo abnoramalities and let them have open honest dialogue about sex.
I don't have a problem with porn, and I don't have a problem with children learning about sex, but I don't think porn is a healthy way for children to learn about sex. There's all sorts of porn out there, and a good deal of it presents unrealistic scenarios out of context. Particularly those that deal with how women should be treated.
Porn should come after proper sex education, not in its stead.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Mod parent up +5 Insightful. Just as porn and piracy have advanced technology development, they have also advanced personal development of so many here. Why shouldn't they do the same for the OLPC recipients?
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
The problem is that this gets in the way of the project's ability to achieve its real goals:
In every society there are people there are people with stricter-than-average standards of morality with regard to matters of sexuality and there are people with less strict standards. Here, with "standards of morality" I mean the pricinples according to which the people actually conduct their lives, I'm not talking about moral rules that people claim to uphold without actually living accordingly.
It can not be denied that for long-term economic development the key group of people to reach are those which who have sufficiently high standards of morality that they are able to have stable families in which the children are supported and empowered so that there is a good chance of them making significant positive contributions to the future of their community, region and/or country.
In every society, there is segmentation: Parents who work hard on empowering their children to be really successful will generally desire for their children to associate with the children of other parents who do the same. This is easy to understand economically. After all, in every society, knowing the right people is a key success factor.
Now what you absolutely don't want to happen in a project with development goals is for the key segments of society (with the people whom you really need to reach) to become unenthusiastic about the project because it gets associated with blatant porn in ways which are considered totally unacceptable in those segments of society.
However, much of the behavior of the people who make porn is evil. Most people who make US-oriented porn refuse to see that their actions degrade women and teach men unhealthy and ultimately unsatisfying habits for how to relate sexually to other people. Unfortuantely, electronic filters can't distinguish healthy behaviors in erotic material from unhealthy behaviors. It can't disinguish art from teaching domination or aggression.
For these things you need healthy communities of people who talk to one another, face to face and teach by example the best ways to interact.
Could someone explain to me, preferably without recourse to religious argument, what is wrong with these kids viewing porn?
Nothing inherently, but in the particular case of OLPC I can see why filtering might be reasonable:
1. In a class room situation any web browsing could be disruptive to teaching, but pornography particularly so. It would be pretty weird if at work the guy opposite me in the office was looking at porn all the time!
2. Parents may be reluctant to give children access to OLPC machines if the machines have a reputation as 'porn portals'. Non-adoption would obviously prevent the anticipated educational benefits of OLPC being realised. To put it another way, revolutionising religious views of pornography is not part of OLPC's core aims.
3. Similarly, if looking for government funding in the US, it's probably useful not to have the stigma of pornography hanging over your head - what with all the religion involved in US politics etc.
Just my $0.02
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
I don't think kids younger than, say, 13, should have unrestricted access to the Internet any more than they should have unrestricted access to the rest of the world. Someone needs to keep an eye on them, provide guidance, and keep them from getting into too much trouble. So I'm not so concerned at the fact that OLPC computers can be used to access porn--that's just a side effect of having a real computer and real Internet access. I'm more concerned that there may be a lack of adult guidance. I know that the societies targeted by OLPC skew very young demographically, but is enough being done to support the adults, or are we simply providing laptops to children and expecting them to figure things out for themselves?
[only] on the white women their brests were digitally obscured.
Perhaps they were respecting the preferences/culture of each group. Maybe they asked the natives if they wanted such to be done. You don't know the whole story and are jumping to conclusions.
Table-ized A.I.
I've been dealing with exactly this issue for the last 4 years. I work in the developing world, and one of the things I do is assist with the integration of computers into programmes of all kinds. I can tell you that one of the biggest fears (after malware) is the content that people will access.
This may strike some of you as bizarre or even disgusting, but in cultures where sexuality - and women too - have historically been repressed, it's not unusual for a man to sit in his office and wank[*], not stopping when other staff members pass the door. Men can sometimes be surprisingly aggressive about their desire for porn. I remember being told a story about IT staff opening pop ups on a miscreant's computer, saying "We can see what you're doing. Stop it!" He just kept right on going. I myself have sat in the next office to one especially persistent guy, blocking domains the moment he accessed them. In the end I had to use back-channels to get the situation addressed.
[*] Odds are really good that this is the only place he can access the Internet. There's no computer at home, and Internet cafés are too expensive. The compulsion simply becomes to strong to deny.
Everybody asks me to install filters, and I do it, because in this country, pornography is against the law. But I explain to every manager who will listen that the technical measures are simply CYA: They exist so that you can argue in a court of law that you took reasonable measures to curb illegal activity. Ultimately, controlling what staff and/or project stakeholders see on their computers is a basic management issue. If people are properly supervised, they will not stray far. If they do, they must be disciplined.
In short: There's no technical substitute for supervision.
The internet was supposed to free everyone and allow them to think for themselves. Naturally those in power decide to try and force it into a tool for control just like everything else from Income Taxes to Drivers Licenses.I submit that this contention is just as flawed as the idea that a content filter is the right tool for the job. What you are describing is people allowing a political and social climate that permits this kind of behaviour. The challenge is not a technical one. The means already exist for a complete surveillance state, and we can't un-invent the tools. All we can do is ensure that they are used appropriately. And that problem doesn't have a technical solution. It comes down to human beings showing humanity to one another.
I'll refrain from commenting on any current socio-political trends that might serve as examples. I'm sure we can all find suitable cases in our own back yards.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
At least, this is the case when geeks are talking about porn, MP3s, and TV shows... When we hear that the CIA is snooping on phone calls or Online-Mega-Mart is selling their customer database, then, quite suddenly, some of those bits are supposed to be less copyable than others.
Sorry, but wtf?
How does something being obvious make it an oxymoron?
you do KNOW what an oxymoron is, right?
'cos the post to which you refer is not an oxymoron by any standards. Unless you can explain exactly how it is self-contradictory?
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.