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Britain's Broadband Censors: a Bunch of Students

Posted by Soulskill on from the bribe-with-pizza dept.

nk497 writes "British ISPs have been told by the government to offer their customers parental control systems to block content like gambling sites and pornography, but the McAfee system used by BT and Sky leaves the tough censoring decisions to a small group of barely-trained students. While much of the categorization work is done using an automated system, decisions on whether porn is 'hardcore' or merely 'erotica,' or whether a page contains hate speech, is left to a team of five to ten people with a day of training — and the job is apparently popular with students. McAfee doesn't publish the list of sites it hands to ISPs to block, making it difficult to see if your own site has been misclassified."

9 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Of course by Hentes · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Shifting through and categorizing thousands of pages a day requires cheap untrained workforce.

  2. At least... by justin12345 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, at least no one saw that one coming. No one could ever have predicted that a government mandate issued to private company would wind up being sourced to the cheapest possible labor.

    --
    Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
    1. Re:At least... by KiloByte · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Because there is no difference between the government and the mafia. Both rob you with taxes, both use force when you fail to pay or obey their rules, both provide some services[1], both aggressively, fiercely try to stamp out any competition. And both seek to expand their influence.

      If there is some money and power that can be taken by force, you can count someone will want to take it.

      [1]. Depends on mafia in question. Where they're just gangs mostly suppressed by the government, they provide almost nothing. When in a place where the population at large is oppressed -- like Sicily in the 19th century, they provide organization and self-defense. During the Prohibition in the US, they provided a single service people were denied. Elsewhere they're purely or nearly purely negative.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  3. Does it matter? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Does it matter if it's a group of students or a group of politicians? or a group of little old ladies? or a group of aliens from Betelgeuse?

    In all seriousness, it doesn't matter *who* does the censoring, they'll always get it wrong. Only the end viewer requesting the page can decide if something is "hardcore" or merely "erotica". Nobody can decide what standards are acceptable to anyone else.

  4. Political sites misclassified by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I've seen far too many political sites and blogs ranging the entire political spectrum being labeled as "hate speech". While true, the opinions are very strong. But I would hardly call that HS.

  5. Goatse for work by Meeni · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I understand we want to protect the pure eyes of the public from disgusting content. Well, actually I don't, if nobody gets harmed in the making of the images, to each one is fantasy. Furthermore, it is not like bestiality is around every click, and seeing a nipple is not going to traumatize anybody, we all have two, don't we ? For the sake of the argument, say we buy the idea that internet 'needs' to be filtered to protect the public from seeing "things". Doesn't it defeats the purpose, when little Johny is protected from porn from 1 to 18, then gets to watch objectively offensive and disgusting porn, the kind of things that makes you despair about humanity, but for 20 hours a week, as a student job to pay tuition ? Am I the only one to think that the work-watchers are going to increase by a wide margin the exposure to insanely offensive material, that otherwise nobody encounters without actually looking for it ?

  6. Re:How is this censorship? by dark_requiem · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Exactly. I forget who said it, and I don't remember the exact wording, but I once read a very wise quote: "Evaluate any government proposal based not on the supposed benefit that will be imparted if administered properly, but by the harm inflicted if administered improperly."

    And besides that, we're talking about a system where one group of people are making decisions about "appropriateness" for a huge mass of people. The notion of what is "adult" or "inappropriate" content varies from individual to individual, as does the notion of "mental preparedness". As with any system of censorship or ratings, those who disagree are left by the wayside (see: "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" for an excellent example using the MPAA).

  7. Re:Of course it doesn't hand the list out by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Knowing corporations this sounds like the perfect set up for, "it's the new guy's fault". A system purposefully built to allow 'er' censorship of anti-BT web sites, of non-corporate politics web sites, of competing web-sites. All contract positions easy to blame and terminate and pretend many web sites were not taken out on purpose.

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  8. Re:Of course it doesn't hand the list out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why do they even care about who gets the blame? It's not like anyone has any recourse anyway. They'll keep doing what they want regardless of what anyone thinks or says, just like they are now. Good excuse or no. Why bother giving us the inferior quality lube if they're going to ram it in anyway?