iPhone's New Parental Controls Block Sex Ed, Allow Violence and Racism (vice.com)

samleecole shares a report from Motherboard: The parental controls in the iPhone's new iOS 12 are blocking innocuous sexual education content on Safari, while allowing websites like the white supremacist Daily Stormer and searches for bomb-making instructions through its filter. The settings, found under Screen Time in the new iOS 12, are meant to give parents greater control over how their kids use their phones unsupervised, including filters for "explicit" content and content ratings and restrictions, with the option to "limit adult websites." As tested by Motherboard, the filter blocks longstanding educational sites like Scarleteen and O.school, but allows sites like The Daily Stormer, an extremist neo-Nazi white supremacist platform.

The filter in question "limits adult websites" on Safari. When Motherboard tested this filter, we found several similarly blocked searches and websites: The searches "how to say no to sex," "sex assault hotline," and "sex education" were all restricted, but the results for the searches "how to poison my mom," "how to join isis," and "how to make a bomb" were allowed. 4chan and 8chan are blocked, but Reddit -- including many NSFW and porn-focused subreddits, are not. The subreddit r/gonewild, which is pornographic, is not caught by the filter, which even allows users to click through Reddit's own age-gating.

Comments

Steve Jobs Was a Prude - And Apple Still Is

[kenwd0elq]

This has always puzzled me. Violence and murder, on film or in TV programming, is generally allowed, with a "PG" or "R" rating or equivalent. Sex is rated "X" or "XXX" depending on the explicitness. And yet, in real life, most people (outside Chicago, at least) will probably never witness a murder or experience a shooting.

But most people WILL see and touch and have sex with other naked people, hopefully many thousands of times. Seems to me that we should celebrate depictions of sex,and discourage depictions of murder.

Re:Steve Jobs Was a Prude - And Apple Still Is

[cascadingstylesheet]

This has always puzzled me. Violence and murder, on film or in TV programming, is generally allowed, with a "PG" or "R" rating or equivalent. Sex is rated "X" or "XXX" depending on the explicitness. And yet, in real life, most people (outside Chicago, at least) will probably never witness a murder or experience a shooting.

But most people WILL see and touch and have sex with other naked people, hopefully many thousands of times. Seems to me that we should celebrate depictions of sex,and discourage depictions of murder.

Well, perhaps you explained it right there.

We're not worried that depictions of murder will sully your real experience of murder.

We're not worried that depictions of murder will twist your development away from being a healthy murderer.

Re:Steve Jobs Was a Prude - And Apple Still Is

[angel'o'sphere]

and it doesn't mean that parental-management tools (such as this) are wrong for having different default choices than you'd prefer.
Yes, they are wrong.

A 14 year old and above has the right to inform her/himself about sex related questions. And if parents block that, it is clear signal that the parents are not the right persons to ask. Also it seems you missed to read the summary: "sex assault hotline", why the funk would a search like this be blocked?

Re:Steve Jobs Was a Prude - And Apple Still Is

[nagora]

Well, I disagree but that's at least a reasoned explanation; not sure why you're getting modded down as a troll.

I don't think "we" (by which I mean "you Americans") are really thinking that way. I think it's much more to do with the history of the country. As others have said, America was founded by violent religious bigots who believed that their god had given them the continent and the current inhabitants were more or less created by and worshipped Satan, so any level of aggression could be directed at them in the name of "good". Meanwhile, the same god had cast them out from paradise because they had learnt the secret of shame for being naked (which is all women's fault, of course). That shame is not misplaced, however: it is the result of obtaining true knowledge from the tree of the same name.

It's all a bit weird but America as we know it today was founded by people who believed this so deeply that they could not share Europe with other Christians who were starting to question these things any more than they could share the new world with the American Indians. They set the pattern and America's splendid isolation allowed it to grow into an all-encompassing culture without serious challenge from the ideas of the Enlightenment and, later, Darwin and others who questioned the whole role of the Christian god in running things - with the Genesis story in particular being widely relegated to the status of a folk-story in Britain and Europe, even by church leaders.

American parents today might rationalise their feelings in the way that you suggest, but I think most of them don't even feel that they need to rationalise them any more than a fish needs to rationalise breathing water.

Anyway, it was a thought-provoking comment, so thanks for that.

Re:Steve Jobs Was a Prude - And Apple Still Is

[AmiMoJo]

Extreme porn isn't really the issue for kids though, it's the potential consequences.

Sex can get someone pregnant, a pretty serious state of affairs with life long ramifications. We have to teach kids about it and how to be responsible, and we tend to be bad at doing that. Also porn can cause mental health problems for kids due to body image issues and pressure to act a certain way or do certain things. Again education helps but we are somewhat bad at it.

Violence is of course also quite serious, but kids tend to be exposed to it quite early on regardless of the movies they watch, and develop an understanding of the consequences and responsibilities. Socially it's easier to talk about and to teach kids about.

Re: Steve Jobs Was a Prude - And Apple Still Is

[Zero__Kelvin]

I didn't really need you to make sure everyone knew I was right, but I guess it can't hurt to see my claim immediately verified. The paranoid hysteric is you.

If you're letting your pre-teen have an iphone

[Spy Handler]

you're doing the parenting thing wrong.

Steve Jobs himself wouldn't let his own kids anywhere near an iPhone or an iPad.

Issues with values

[duke_cheetah2003]

I really don't understand this kind of thing. It's just fine to see the most horrific violence imaginable, but you can't see someone's penis or breasts. What the hell?

Is it just me, or would the more ideal world be where this is completely reversed?

Re:Issues with values

[Anonymous Coward]

As a kid I stumbled across a few horror movies. I survived and they didn't make me go obliterate every doll I saw, I didn't rip my face off, nor do I engage in cannibalism. Sure I always made sure my closet was locked when I went to bed, but so what. That's part of growing up.

The reason kids get such a distorted view of sex is because it's restricted. It's easier to come across harder core porn than it is to find good information about real sex. And I mean actual pictures, not low quality diagrams with tons of missing info. Where you taught about the more than 3 holes females have between their legs and that males don't have to ejaculate and orgasm at the same time? Sex ed is horrible. Everyone knows moves and TV stories are make believe. But there is no sex education about porn so kids don't realize it's also make believe. They can't see regular sex vids and real advice about sex because those types of sites are all restricted. The harder core stuff jumps around from domain to domain so the blacklists rarely keep up.

If you want kids to not be traumatized by snuff films and maggots eating your balls out, then you need to stop banning everything so they can also see what normal is supposed to be. You'll never block all the maggots.

Re:Stop it

[e3m4n]

as a libertarian Im all for having more tools, as a parent, to decide what is and what is not ok. Obviously there are some good things to the internet in terms of research power, etc. And there is a whole lot of bad shit too. The more granular and more power I have to exempt or ban specific things that slip through, or get caught by, a filter is never a bad thing. Having the tools gives the parents to choose how much or how little to implement. Ultimately its still their choice. If letting your 6yr old watch the original Jurrasic Park (R) in the theatre because its about dinosaurs is ok with you, well Im not the one who has to deal with the kids traumatized with nightmares. Thats on them. Me, well I'm trying to keep my kids maintaining a healthy baseline of normalcy without trying to stiffel them more than absolutely necessary to prevent them obtaining some unhealthy or unrealistic view/opinion on things.

Whitelist

[markdavis]

Blacklists and keyword filters (what Apple is trying to do) *never* work like you think they will. The WWW is far, far, far too big and complicated for any such grandiose scheme to ever hope to tame. Even a site like Wikipedia is far too diverse, frank, and complex (I have seen plenty of shocking things there not suitable for children).

The only thing that works is a whitelist- allowing one to visit ONLY the specifically sites in an approved list. Of course, this is extremely restrictive and often not practical. Personally, I would not allow young children unsupervised access to non-whitelisted web, ever. As they get older, I would continuously expand the whitelist until eventually flipping over to a blacklist.

No problem for U.S.

[bjwest]

Here in the U.S., sex is taboo, and heaven forbid we try to teach it to our children. Violence and racism? Those are prime time material, and OK to show to anyone of any age.