Actually, let's have a proper rant on 6 apart's new "flagging" system because it is really silly

[sparkindarkness]

Let us start first off by questioning what this will actually achieve. This is supposed to stop us dirty dirty porny people from abusing the innocent little minds of kiddies out there. And how will it do that? Well, prudish folk looking at my journal can flag contents that are deemed mature, lj will look at it and say "tut tut" and mark it as mature (of course, this relies on said prudish folk actually READING my journal, which is rather remote). Alternatively, dirty, slashy moi will voluntarily parse through the literally THOUSANDS of entries in my journal and label them accordingly (I am NOT locking down the whole thing because I refuse to accept that much of what I have written is for 'mature' audiences only). Of course, that relies on MY (the porny slashy one) judgement (which we assume the prudish ones are not going to be best pleased with).

So, stuff in my journal is now mature. You know what this means? It means if your birth date in your journal profile shows you as being less than 14/18 you can't read the post. You will be protected from all porny slashness dear kiddies! Of course this assumes that said kiddies (up to 17 years old) are actually incapable of, you know, EDITING their age in the profile or creating a braaaaand new journal with a fake age. Because, y'know, no teenager would EVER lie about their age and such technological mastery is far beyond the skills of your average blogging 16 year old.

Really, parents. If you are THIS concerned by what your child or teenager is accessing online then you need to monitor them better (the parenting thing, remember?) Because this system is beyond useless.

So, on a scale of 'hilariously pathetic' to 'my god this is so stupid it destroys my faith in human intelligence' how ridiculous is this idea?


But wait, there's MORE!

See, we've already seen wrangles back and forth about what constitutes child porn. Want to see some of the new definitions?

'Adult concepts' Suitable for 15+
Anyone know what this means? Are we talking life insurance? Mortgage parents? Complaining about one's inlaws? Wedding planning? Child rearing? Exactly what DOES count as an 'adult concept?' And relationships? Where do we reach adult concepts? Acknowledging there is a relationship? Kissing? Homosexuality? Because, the thing is our journals can be flagged by anyone with their OWN definitions of what makes and adult concept unacceptable for kiddies - and with such a vague term who can say what the LJ team (who are hardly known for their good common sense. Or uncommon sense. Or any kind of sense at all) will decide needs attention?

Offensive
Yeah, I'm sure we're all laughing about this one. There is a large portion of the world's population that finds my very existance offensive. The fact that Ann Coulter continues to draw breath is very offensive to me. JUst about every world that Pat Robertson defiles paper with offends me. We have a woman locked up in sudan for calling a teddy bear Mohammad - that certainly offended some people (both the naming and the locking up). It is possible that by sitting very carefully in a cave in the Andes away from all society you MAY escape from offending someone. But it's not likely. Frankly this is the most useless flagging toold of all time.


Hey, want a bonus prize? If LJ decides to change the status of one of your posts to "adult" or "explicit" they're not going to tell you! That's right, no notification. Half your journal could be locked down right now and you'd not have the slightest clue. All it takes is one train load of nutty fanatics and your journals can be marked as a mature purveyor of slutty porn and you wouldn't even know. Of course, you can appeal - except what's the point of an appeal if you don't know it's happened?


Oh and the new system of reporting? See, they're going to look at the ones with the most flags. Sooooo, a paedophile site with low traffic? No monitoring/random ban hammering. A fanartists or author or just someone a random fundamentalists whack group decides to galvanise its members against? Flagged and examined and left to the... judgement of the abuse team.

Gah, this is just so many kinds of stupid it's unreal.

EDIT TO ADD:
LJ's first lie - this will not affect users over 18. Well, to be sure it DOESn'T effect you, you might want to go to your settings http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/ and scroll to the bottom and make sure LJ hasn't decided to change your settings to filter out the naughty inappropriate stuff. It seems filtering is the new default.

Comments

[gnarlycranium.livejournal.com]

I also wonder... What about kids under 18/14 who happen to have parents who earnestly don't mind if they see 'mature' content, and have full permission to read certain things, but still get blocked under the whole blanket policy? Who is that helping?

Yeah... if this shit keeps up, depending what happens with these policies... I'm outta here. It's not that I have explicit stuff in my journal-- cause really, I don't-- it's that I don't feel like frequenting censored areas of the internet. It's boring and fake there.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Which is one of the reasons I'm not going to change the settings on any of mine. In the UK the age of consent is 16. If they/their parents do not wish them to view "adult material" then it is their/their parents' job to ensure they do not see it - not mine to play herd. I won't make that decision for them.

I also find the system ridiculous, since nayone "underaged" can easily lie about their age to see whatever they want. The only way that would work would be parental supervision and if the poor innocent kiddies HAD parental supervision of their net surfing then this whole flagging system would be pointless anyway.

It's not even efficient censorship! It's just designed to create trouble, drama and problems with no advantage at all. This is why i keep my GJ and IJ

[gnarlycranium.livejournal.com]

if the poor innocent kiddies HAD parental supervision of their net surfing then this whole flagging system would be pointless anyway

...POINT.

The age thingie is pretty much just for 6A to have plausible deniability, it's not THEIR fault if you lie on the age thing, etc... so yeah it's not even about kids, it's them covering their ass.

Although, granted, society in general should have SOME cognizance of the vulnerability of children, and support their protection because even good parents can't be everywhere at once... but... ah, hell. I don't know. Protection from what? My parents never censored what I watched, so I have a REALLY hard time imagining anything on tv or the internet being harmful, much less dangerous enough to require a lot of freaking out. Maybe I'd feel different if I had my own kids? ....If I had my own kids I'd damn well do my best to make sure they could COPE with this shit cause they're going to be exposed anywhere-- good christ, even just the OTHER KIDS AT SCHOOL were the most obscene and offensive thing I was ever exposed to! Period! Forget TV!!

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

See, here's another thing - since when are 17 year olds children who need protecting? Maybe it's a cultural difference but in my book at age 16 you are legally old enough to have sex, have a job and raise kiddies - why are we censoring things from people we consider legally adult? And really, can anyone actually say that sexual content will traumatise a 17 year old?

I think of my own exposure to various materials - and I doubt it's unusual - and think of all the the nekked people I can see on normal TV, in normal newspapers, on magazine racks et al. People are just hysterical.