This has been going on for over 25 years now.
The kind of people who go into business building censorship software turn out to quite often be the kind of people who think feminism is a hate group, atheism is a cult, birth control is a dangerous drug, evolutionary biology is political extremism, and therapists are child-molesters. As such, it is unsurprising that this software's behavior has quite often reflected those views.
Turns out people that want to block access to information are generally shit people.
Who would've thunk?
Yup. I have no filters at home and my parenting policy is, "let's talk about it." I don't understand why that's so radical. They're going to see it eventually, I'd prefer for it to happen when they're young enough to still come to me about it.
I've had talks with my oldest about nuclear warfare (gave him nightmares without any pictures needed) because he was joking about nukes. I didn't to into details, but when I said if the bomb dropped near our city, everyone, including us would die, he got the picture. We've talked about the Russia Ukraine war and Palestine Israel war, and I think even at his relatively young age (10), he understands that war isn't something we should joke about. All of these discussions happened because he saw something on my x screen or heard something at school, and I try to be as thorough as I can for his age.
So parents, instead of blocking stuff, actually talk to your kids. You don't need to go into graphic detail, but make sure the core ideas get across. My kids don't want to look up stuff after I explain because they're satisfied with my answer (I often read articles with them that I know won't be too graphic).
My kids will likely look up stuff they're not supposed to, but they'll do that on a friend's device instead if I block it, and then they won't trust me to talk about it.
I had to complain to my school multiple times during highschool like 15 years ago for the same shit. Texas public school. I remember Atheism being blocked for being a cult then, which was just.. infuriating as a tiny atheist.
Isn't this how it always goes with any kind of censorship? It doesn't even matter if there were good intentions behind it or not, the result is the same.
Like with criminal justice systems, you either have to be okay with letting 1% of the bad guys go free* to make sure the good guys don't get caught, or you catch 100% of the bad guys but also mistakenly lock up innocent people.
Haven't seen that analogy in a long time. I used to debate this with people out of curiosity and was horrified at some peoples insistence that destroying some innocent lives is perfectly fine so long as we got all the actual criminals.
I always bet they'd change their tune if it was THEIR innocent life.
My schools blocker used to block their own site from time to time. I wouldnt really call it stupidity, school IT or the vendor (im sure they payed some absurd amout for the service) would tweak the filter and the school site would get flagged.
I have worked for companies that dealt with content filters. This was in the UK where a number of counties in the south of England have "sex" as the last three letters. The problem is non-trivial.
And if you think it is, my second sentence here contains 'have "sex"' in a context that is very hard to distinguish from a context a school might not want their students investigating. If you are reading this through your school's blocker... well you might not be. It might have been blocked already.
School districts are quick to buy Chromebooks and go "1:1", but cheap out on IT and cybersecurity.
I'm sorry, I got news for you. The IT and security is also garbage at the places that way overspend on it.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
