Internet filtering for children (or other reasons) that would actually make sense

[jack]

I was recently debating in another journal about new suggestions for internet filtering, ostensibly to prevent children seeing child-inappropriate sites. This is normally met with -- imho justified -- cries of doom. However, it does seem likely that there would be ways to approach it which would actually do some good -- if you, as a reasonably technical aware person, were proposing something, what would it be?

Suggestions:

* Not support political censorship
* If it requires a large investment of manpower (eg. great firewall) be upfront about where that comes from
* Should fulfil stated purpose of allowing concerned non-technical parents to protect their children from inappropriate content to at least some extent
* Should not be a massive expensive unworkable pointless joke
* Should be clear if it will work a country at a time (probably not) or be a small but incremental improvement over large classes of website.

Whatever the government is thinking about is almost certainly unworkable. But if there were something NOT ridiculous which could be suggested instead, that would actually be better than just "it doesn't work", or at least make clear to people who DO want a solution that it may be expensive.

It might even have positive side effects if (eg) pure spam domain names were caught in the crossfire.

Comments

[seryn]

I like the idea, main living area with wireless child-friendly keyboards, a giant LCD TV panel, wireless mouse/trackball in the cartoonishly large size.... and children are only allowed to be online that way. If anyone even glancing from the next room can see what you're doing, there's no problem with direct observation.

If they need computers for schoolwork, those computers are offline.

Until the kid is old enough to be given a limited flexibility, then they should share the "family" computer the history of which is reviewed by the parents. The parents should discuss with children the appropriateness of various choices and how to avoid personal information being taken and how to avoid nefarious places online. "If there's a link in your twitter feed, don't click it because you can't tell where it goes. Rickrolling is a mild irritant compared to sites that give the computer viruses even past two firewalls." Or whatever the future equivalent is.

If there are intermittent returns to the big TV version for joint/supervised lessons about finding information online and evaluation of sources, I think that would provide enough training. Then by the time the child is a teenager in actual need of (limited) privacy, they have skills enough to avoid being defrauded or abused more than happens in real life.

I think it's a low-cost solution, since it costs for the wireless keyboard and cables to hook a computer to the TV, then there are no additional costs. It's implementable at a family level. It provides means for children to actually learn the skills they need instead of being dropped into boiling water at whatever "magic age". It requires no external input or agreement about what is appropriate for "all" children because it's done on a case-by-case basis. The only negative to this is that it requires a massive committment on the part of the parents to raise a productive healthy member of our society... which is exactly what they signed up for.