I love the new Filter Stephen Conroy site – it is so clear in identifying the problems with the filter and in issuing a call to action for Victorian voters at the next election – put Stephen Conroy last on your Senate ballot papers.
I’m keen to put up a similar site aimed at people who very much want their own family’s internet access to be filtered and who have bought into the idea that Conroy’s filter is going to be the easiest way to do it (and that it will work). It needs to demonstrate in a friendly manner why the mandatory filter is such a bad idea and how alternatives that are voluntary but perhaps government subsidised/regulated could work so much better.
Any bright ideas on exactly what the site should cover? Any volunteers to help me out with the copy-writing side of things?
Would it be possible to find some genuine, less interested research on problems children face online? For example, peer-to-peer bullying, targeted marketing, as well as the bugbear of exposure to unwanted or frightening material? And evidence-based responses? It would be genuinely useful, even outside this campaign, to have a feminist, open-minded resource about children and the Internet at various ages.
I actually think (not in an evidenced way, I’m extrapolating from my own childhood) that the way that many children are most likely to be exposed to distressing material on the ‘net is as part of bullying by their peers, and that another possible scenario is going to be as part of abuse by an adult or teen. Most of my peers as a child who saw unwanted pornography as a child were shown it by an older relative in (what I now recognise as) an abusive way, and as teens unwanted pornography was shown by peers as part of bullying.
Excellent points. Perhaps a more general anti-cyberbullying and anti-cyber-abuse site with a specific section dedicated to the shortcomings of the proposed mandatory filter would be a better way to go.
In terms of other things your site might cover, I suppose that you could have three lists:
* current proposal, what it will filter, what it won’t filter, non-filtering disadvantages (ie speed, privacy)
* original proposal, what it would have filtered, what it wouldn’t have filtered, non-filtering disadvantages
* optional filtering tools, what they would filter, what they wouldn’t, advantages and disadvantages
I think a really hard group to reach with this argument, or probably many nuanced argument about children and the Internet, are parents who do not recognise the right to privacy of their child at any age, because the argument that their teen might want to, say, read about or discuss their emerging sexuality online prior to or instead of discussing it with a parent is abhorrent to them.
I’d be very very happy to help develop a more general anti-cyberbullying and anti-cyber-abuse resource site grounded in respect for children’s developing autonomy and privacy. To the extent that I can as as someone who is not professionally educated in working with children, anyway.
Doing filter software reviews would probably be one thing such a site could have.
I think while it is right for the site to take such parents into consideration and not actively antagonise them or fuel their existing antagonism further, I’m not sure that actually trying to persuade them is a feasible goal per se.
The more I think of it, the more a general site grounded in respect for children’s autonomy and privacy appeals to me – it’s much more of a meaningful ongoing resource than just a site set up against the filter for this election could ever be.
I suppose, re reaching or not antagonising that group, that modelling and discussing relationships between parents and children that is neither “bah children can cope with anything, and child abuse is rare/non-existent” nor “I am a paladin of righteousness protecting the children behind high walls” isn’t useless.
Any volunteers to help me out with the copy-writing side of things?
Feel free to sling me tasks, TT!