How can the internet become more safe for children and less susceptible for hatred and misinformation?

[noname223]

Personally I think the internet will be way more regulated in the future than in the current time. The EU is planning a lot of things. I am kind of scared this could become like in the book 1984. That it will become a huge surveillance apparatus. They want for example to soften end-to end encryption. I think this is a huge scandal. Privacy and data collection is important to me. Though I think the people won't protest againt it when it happens. They will always depict the most cruel crimes to defend such policies. But it is like with a knife. You can make a sandwich with it or hurt another person. I don't deny regulation is needed but these peole don't care about civil rights in any shape of form imo.

I agree companies like Alphabet, Amazon or Apple should pay their fair share. But for example anonymity on the internet should remain possible. There are crazy ideas like having to use your real name on platforms like facebook. I think in Austria there is a law like that. It did not help to avoid hate crimes. I think the results were not the intended ones. Some people are that radicalized that they even threaten people online with their clear name.

For me personally a clear name rule on all platforms would ruin the whole internet. On the internet one should also be allowed to talk about stigmatized and embarassing topics. Without anonymity many people had to remain silent. For example whistleblowers who don't want to lose their job. I ask myself whether I will experience the day when the usage of VPNs gets criminalized I could imagine that. In authoritarian countries I think they are already prohibited.

Maybe you read the news story about Apple and their filter system. They wanted to introduce a system that scans your whole phone whether there is child pornography. I am not sure what the result was. I think they stopped the system because the protest was too loud. But I think some companies already have such filters. I can remember a story that I read in the newspaper. A father wanted to have an appoinment with a doctor because his child had a skin rash. The secretary told him to send a picture of the skin rash. In the end the police visited him for sending illegal photos. There was such a system on his phone and alerted the police.

I think this is a good example how such filters can be counterproductive. Moreover similar technology is acquired from dictators to spy on political enemies to oppress the people. It is kind of dangerous that such techology can be misused. AI in general has a huge potential to fuck our societies.

How to avoid doxxing and hate crimes? I don't really have a good answer maybe you have? The clear name usage is not a good one in my opinon.

How to protect children from content they should not see? I think there are two options. Either you have to show your identity card at for example porn websites or every system handed to children should have programmes installed that protect children from accessing such websites. Personally I prefer the latter one a lot. I think I am kind of paranoid about doxxing and similar stuff. And I think if one had to prove with the identity card which adult content one consumes criminals would love hacking such sensitive data. One could blackmail a lot of people by doing that. I am pretty sure the data would not be secure. I think in the UK there is already such a system for pornogrpaphy (showing your ID card) and in my country they want to implement that. Most websites try to circumvent that. I think it is pretty understandable why people are paranoid about showing their ID card on such websites. The potential your life could get ruined over it is not that low.

Personally I prefer the latter one. Parents should become more educated on protecting their children from content they should not consume. I mean if they can invent a filter that scans videos or photos for illegal content there should also be potentially a programme for internet safety. Though I think it is pretty hard to invent such a programme. It is hard to filter all adult websites. I think the parents have to actively monitor which content their children consume. I could very well imagine there is a possiblity to disable the option to delete the internet history. I think parents should take this seriously. I mean it is a open secret that the internet is full of porn. I think every third search is for pornography. I am glad I was not exposed to it in a very young age.

Misinformation? There are offical fact checkers in my country. But I think in the US they have a bad standing. Who is checking the fact checkers? I think they labled the covid-lab theoryy as fake news at the start of the pandemic. The full truth is not revealed yet. I think the evidence rather tends against it. But they politicized it. There are some good arguments in favor of the lab theory. Labeling it as fake news per se might have been misinformation. So we see it is pretty difficult. I don't have a good answer for that either.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

 

[hamvil]

man I am really amazed by your posts. You manage to make so many of them and they are all so well written and detailled. You should really do the ghost writer or put this skill in practice. Well maybe you do that already I do not know.

I really do not have an answer to your questions. I guess (but I could be wrong) that Internet is dangerous for children especially on the darknet. Those sites are periodically shut down by police force but I guess they also pop up again. Bit coin on the other hand made paying for those "services" even easier.

The disinformation is embedded into the fabric of the Internet. Most of the algorithms that pick the content we see on the social are optimized to maximise interaction and the best way to do that is by promoting divisive content. Such content is often not checked and factually wrong.

Society is also becoming more narcissistic. We believe that we can affect reality with our own words. So we are also free to pick the facts that we like, flat earth, chem trails, vaccines etc. There is bedrock of reality down there but the narrative you find on Internet and in the current society ignores it. I find this particularly true for teens and young adults that feel a lot of peer pressure these days.

 

[theboy]

Communication campaigns

 

[GrumpyFrog]

How to avoid doxxing and hate crimes? I don't really have a good answer maybe you have?

Best way to avoid doxxing is to limit the amount of information you have open out there about yourself. If you need Facebook for something, like work or registering for some event or talking to your auntie, then just make your page private so that randoms don't get to dig around in it, don't add strangers to your friend list and separate your Facebook page with your real name, pic and work and family connections from your personal interests that you're rather not have doxxed - by which I mean do not use that Facebook page to register on sites related to your personal interests, do not use it to ask personal questions in groups, do not use your Internet nicknames around your Facebook page or add people you met on Reddit as your friends and of course do not use your real name or post your pictures on forums/chats/other social media. It's even better if you have separate email addresses for stuff related to your real life, such as Facebook, Linkedin, work, apps you use to shop etc. and for personal stuff such as registering on forums. If you want to register on some site you'd really rather not have people know you're using - use VPN and an email/nickname that you don't use anywhere else, and you're probably safe. The less personal information such as pictures and real names/locations you have on social media, the less likely you are to be doxxed. Oh, and also don't trust random people off the Internet too much if they use DM to ask for personal information, such as pictures, location, real name etc.
In most cases, the advice above will make you safe from doxxing. It wouldn't make it impossible to doxx you - that would require you to stay off all social media and really limit your tech usage, but that would make finding out your real identity a very difficult task and let's face it, most of us aren't really that special or interesting for people to bend over backwards to doxx us. For those who really want to do a hate crime, there is no need to play secret agent and team up with hackers to do that, there are plenty of people who have all their info out in the open that they can harass.

How to protect children from content they should not see? I think there are two options. Either you have to show your identity card at for example porn websites or every system handed to children should have programmes installed that protect children from accessing such websites. Personally I prefer the latter one a lot.

In my opinion, for the young children, child protection filters should do the trick if you really must leave the kid alone with a device, but most of the time it is simply sad when a toddler is left alone with a tablet to mindlessly click through YouTube videos for hours as a substitute for human interaction. The Internet is not "bad for kids", the parental indifference and neglect is, if you can't have someone spending quality time with a child - at least have an adult sitting in a room with them and supervising their activities and maybe sometimes interacting with the child, show interest in the things they do etc. If you are kind to the kid and feign interest in their Roblox run or the plot of Paw Patrol cartoon from time to time, you will build a relationship with them, the child will be willing to share their feelings about the stuff they do on the Internet with you and if they accidentally see something weird or scary - they will tell you themselves instead of continuing to chat to a weirdo who will show them porn because they've been left alone with YouTube since they were 10 months old and interacting on a computer is the only form of human connection they understand.
And if your kid is old and smart enough to fool the child filter - I would say that they officially entered the age when adults shouldn't really try to hide the fact that bad things exist from them, and instead try to build trust in order to be able to help them to process those bad things.
And lets face it. Teenagers are horny. They will look for things to get off to, and you can't stop them from it. I know it's a weird feeling. Me and my little sister are 17 years apart, she turned 13 this year. I am still trying to process the fact that I clearly remember changing her diapers and now she is the same age as one of my students that writes weird NSFW werewolf fanfiction in her free time, so she might very well be into something like that already. Makes you feel hella old and very weird. But that is okay. Kids grow up. Porn doesn't give them STDs and doesn't lead to unwanted pregnancies, and if you teach a teenager about consent, why actually hooking up with adults is not a good idea, and how porn is representative of fantasies and not reality, porn doesn't pose danger to them. Controversial thought, I know. Yes, you can get addicted to porn. You can also get addicted to videogames, social media, sugar, caffeine and even exercise. Psychological addiction forms to fill a void and comes up when something is already wrong in the first place, it is solvable with good therapy and possibly solving underlying problems such as bullying and poor relationship with family.
TLDR: If child's parents are doing an adequate job of raising their child, they should be around and know what their kid is doing on the Internet while the child is too young to see some things, and have a trusting relationship with their child and be able to talk to them about adult things so that they aren't traumatized by Internet content when the child grows older. If everyone does that, there would be no need to go out of our way to hide adult content from children. And if people bring new humans into this world and then proceed to not parent them adequately, they need to STFU and stop making it everyone else's problem.

Misinformation? There are offical fact checkers in my country. But I think in the US they have a bad standing. Who is checking the fact checkers?

Exactly. Once you trust someone else to do fact checking for you and tell you what information you can consider true and what you cannot - you've officially put your brain on a shelf and entered a dystopian future when someone else forms your thoughts and opinions and then puts them into your head. How can you be sure that "fact checkers" do not have an agenda and aren't lying to you? The solution isn't hiding wrong information, it is providing more information so that people can compare, analyze and make logical conclusions. Discussions and difference of opinions create progress and allow new ideas to flourish, as long as you keep them civilized and don't let them devolve into ad hominem.

@noname223 you are a gem of this forum, thank you for all these thought-provoking threads.

 

[noname223]

Best way to avoid doxxing is to limit the amount of information you have open out there about yourself. If you need Facebook for something, like work or registering for some event or talking to your auntie, then just make your page private so that randoms don't get to dig around in it, don't add strangers to your friend list and separate your Facebook page with your real name, pic and work and family connections from your personal interests that you're rather not have doxxed - by which I mean do not use that Facebook page to register on sites related to your personal interests, do not use it to ask personal questions in groups, do not use your Internet nicknames around your Facebook page or add people you met on Reddit as your friends and of course do not use your real name or post your pictures on forums/chats/other social media. It's even better if you have separate email addresses for stuff related to your real life, such as Facebook, Linkedin, work, apps you use to shop etc. and for personal stuff such as registering on forums. If you want to register on some site you'd really rather not have people know you're using - use VPN and an email/nickname that you don't use anywhere else, and you're probably safe. The less personal information such as pictures and real names/locations you have on social media, the less likely you are to be doxxed. Oh, and also don't trust random people off the Internet too much if they use DM to ask for personal information, such as pictures, location, real name etc.
In most cases, the advice above will make you safe from doxxing. It wouldn't make it impossible to doxx you - that would require you to stay off all social media and really limit your tech usage, but that would make finding out your real identity a very difficult task and let's face it, most of us aren't really that special or interesting for people to bend over backwards to doxx us. For those who really want to do a hate crime, there is no need to play secret agent and team up with hackers to do that, there are plenty of people who have all their info out in the open that they can harass.

In my opinion, for the young children, child protection filters should do the trick if you really must leave the kid alone with a device, but most of the time it is simply sad when a toddler is left alone with a tablet to mindlessly click through YouTube videos for hours as a substitute for human interaction. The Internet is not "bad for kids", the parental indifference and neglect is, if you can't have someone spending quality time with a child - at least have an adult sitting in a room with them and supervising their activities and maybe sometimes interacting with the child, show interest in the things they do etc. If you are kind to the kid and feign interest in their Roblox run or the plot of Paw Patrol cartoon from time to time, you will build a relationship with them, the child will be willing to share their feelings about the stuff they do on the Internet with you and if they accidentally see something weird or scary - they will tell you themselves instead of continuing to chat to a weirdo who will show them porn because they've been left alone with YouTube since they were 10 months old and interacting on a computer is the only form of human connection they understand.
And if your kid is old and smart enough to fool the child filter - I would say that they officially entered the age when adults shouldn't really try to hide the fact that bad things exist from them, and instead try to build trust in order to be able to help them to process those bad things.
And lets face it. Teenagers are horny. They will look for things to get off to, and you can't stop them from it. I know it's a weird feeling. Me and my little sister are 17 years apart, she turned 13 this year. I am still trying to process the fact that I clearly remember changing her diapers and now she is the same age as one of my students that writes weird NSFW werewolf fanfiction in her free time, so she might very well be into something like that already. Makes you feel hella old and very weird. But that is okay. Kids grow up. Porn doesn't give them STDs and doesn't lead to unwanted pregnancies, and if you teach a teenager about consent, why actually hooking up with adults is not a good idea, and how porn is representative of fantasies and not reality, porn doesn't pose danger to them. Controversial thought, I know. Yes, you can get addicted to porn. You can also get addicted to videogames, social media, sugar, caffeine and even exercise. Psychological addiction forms to fill a void and comes up when something is already wrong in the first place, it is solvable with good therapy and possibly solving underlying problems such as bullying and poor relationship with family.
TLDR: If child's parents are doing an adequate job of raising their child, they should be around and know what their kid is doing on the Internet while the child is too young to see some things, and have a trusting relationship with their child and be able to talk to them about adult things so that they aren't traumatized by Internet content when the child grows older. If everyone does that, there would be no need to go out of our way to hide adult content from children. And if people bring new humans into this world and then proceed to not parent them adequately, they need to STFU and stop making it everyone else's problem.

Exactly. Once you trust someone else to do fact checking for you and tell you what information you can consider true and what you cannot - you've officially put your brain on a shelf and entered a dystopian future when someone else forms your thoughts and opinions and then puts them into your head. How can you be sure that "fact checkers" do not have an agenda and aren't lying to you? The solution isn't hiding wrong information, it is providing more information so that people can compare, analyze and make logical conclusions. Discussions and difference of opinions create progress and allow new ideas to flourish, as long as you keep them civilized and don't let them devolve into ad hominem.

@noname223 you are a gem of this forum, thank you for all these thought-provoking threads.

Thank you very much for your compliment! I benefit from writing here too. So it is a win-win situation. It distracts from the pressure I am doing to myself every single day. All the stress and sorrows I experience daily.

Many people said my threads were creative and thought-provoking. Thank you very much for all your compliments.. It means much to me.
Sending you a lot of hugs and love @Nessie ! And all the others who read that.

 

[kanashikunaika]

I'm replying to this way late, which I hope is okay (I'm new to forums).
Anyways, I personally think the best way to fix this is to keep kids off the internet, period (like 13 and under kids). I know it sounds drastic, but the internet is a seriously powerful place, and kids just won't know how to handle it and keep themselves safe. Whenever we deal with other areas of life that are dangerous for kids, we try to keep them away from them, rather than childproofing the entire system. The internet is way too big and complex to effectively childproof anyways.
In other words, parents should watch their kids better and give them better things to do other than use the internet at such young ages. The whole thing that happened with YouTube and their child content is kinda spurring this feeling from me.

 

[Someone123]

If there is some way to make it more difficult to view porn that could protect children, but there is so much money in it and it's difficult to think of a system where adults can view it but children caqn to some extent be protected. Maybe have a filtered internet option that parents can use- I think there may be some way parents can do this already, not sure. I'm not sure there is a feasible solution here.