Jarhyn
Wizard
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2010
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- 15,495
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- Androgyne; they/them
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- Natural Philosophy, Game Theoretic Ethicist
Rather, I think a lot of it has to do with a rather naive approach to the internet in general. The fact is that if parents treated the internet even a little bit like they treat alcohol, we all would be far better off.So, I know this is going to be something folks would disagree with, but I don't think we should allow kids on the internet unsupervised at all.
I think that the Internet should be like liquor: you show your ID to get an account, and access should be strictly controlled to the same extent we expect control of liquor cabinets, and we should have class time dedicated to informing people how to use the internet safely, what the dangers are, as well as a discussion about how porn is illusory/inaccurate/misleading, and how any adult trying to distribute it to the likes of them has ulterior motives.
I will go further and wonder if the whole 'World Wide Web' is a net negative.
It started as a wonderful dream; and in many ways the first decade or so of the 'Web was a paradise compared with what we have now.
Porn is the least of my worries. What about shaming teenagers, identity theft and other frauds? Search engines used to find brilliant little websites. Now they're just tuned to point to paywalls and other revenue generation. (I searched for an ordinary but slightly uncommon uncapitalized English word yesterday and the first page of results had NOTHING but links to a company using that as a brand-name.)
I thought Wikipedia was wonderful when it first appeared: Much larger and easier to edit than the Encyclopedia Brittanica. IMHO it's now a dismal caricature of its past promise ... and yet is STILL one of the best sites around! I've been searching the Internet off and on for a while, and the changes for the worse are palpable. Dissatisfied with a Wikipedia answer and want to explore a topic further? Most of the "relevant" Google hits will be pages which simply copied the Wiki article word-for-word, mistakes and all.
And do let us not get started on "Social Media."
Call me a Luddite; call me a reactionary; but I think when The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization is written (sooner than you think), the 'Net (especially social media) will get much blame.
Everyone's internet can and should be authenticated insofar as basic access, and while I do have my doubts as to whether we would really be able to prevent all underage access any more than we can prevent underage access to liquor or firearms or cigarettes, our culture does a passable job of at least some of those things through a late enough age that hopefully it does some good.
My expectation would be for at least some privacy.
Adult websites that take themselves seriously in terms of protecting kids use an RTA label that makes it easy for browser and ISP based systems to restrict content from being accessed by minors.
I would go so far as to say, you should probably have to type your login to your ISP every time you connect, or at least you should if you have kids in your home. If we could manage even that tiny little thing, the virtual equivalent of "auto-locks on the liquor cabinet", we would be miles ahead of where we are now.
I don't even think letting pictures of real kids on the internet was a good idea.
I also think you're right about social media mostly. To be fair, forums are a form of social media, too. It's almost like "cities" and "villages". People live in cities. It's this big trope, even, as a big "no shit" to political maps that show how much red land that happens to be occupied what turns out to be shockingly few people. Online is no different, in that people tend to want to surf and post in large, loosely interconnected hubs.
But if you want what is probably the absolute peak of internet content, I would point you over to https://www.fieggen.com/ better known as Ian's Shoelace Site.
It's probably the best site I've ever found on knot tying and shoe laces.