Parental control mechanisms - Heading off bad press

Marketing
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Russell, respectfully, I must disagree with you on this.

MaidSafe is designed in response to the abuse of the Internet through the imposition of arbitrary restrictions such as you suggest. The original Internet worked fine initially as a “backbone”. But gradually, our fears were exploited, and we all lost the presumption of innocence. We began to be treated as suspects, through surveillance. Now we live in a Post-Snowden nightmare of near total surveillance, because of what might happen. Our privacy and freedom have been taken away from us by the imposition of the very “add-on” technologies you suggest should be added to MaidSafe.

The minute we start down the road of adding “tracking” and “restrictions” to MaidSafe, even as layers on top, even if they are voluntary… before you know it, they will no longer be voluntary, they will be obligatory, in the form of laws and limiters, and they will be ubiquitous.

Again, David’s original approach is the only correct one; make it impossible to violate our privacy, and keep it that way. And again, my response is the same; no one who is afraid of Freedom will ever be satisfied while even the remotest possibility of abuse exists, so it is pointless even attempting to placate them.

The real point here is not the technology - it is that we as a society have forgotten how to live with Freedom, without letting our fears of what might happen overwhelm us. We have come to regard all individuals, particularly parents as fundamentally incompetent and treat all strangers as inherently dangerous. We ignore the actual statistically insignificant incidence of a given problem, and imagine instead that if it can happen, it will, and to our kids first. Particularly in the case cited by this thread, we allow imaginary future negative opinion to spook us into surrendering our Freedom and security before the first shot has been fired, before anything has actually happened, and before the product has even been launched.

This is a very bad state of affairs. To forget, in less than two generations, the concept of liberty, which is the entire founding principle of Western Democracy, and to no longer be able to do the ethical and philosophical calculus required to exercise it, which we once could do in our heads… this is the actual problem. Unfortunately, that is a problem that no amount of technology can fix.

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http://www.getnymi.com/ has been discussed for the proving your human thread, but I think it (or a variation) can also be used in this scenario. As a parent I understand the dilemma between allowing your child’s mind to develop and grow where it may, but then having some level of control to create a healthy environment to do just that.

My child is young and he already makes me nervous by how quickly his knowledge base of computers (And my passwords) is expanding. I know I had hacked pretty much anything electronic (Including unmentionable satellite broadcasts) my parents used and “protected” me from by the time I was 8-9 years old.

This line of thought for me has lead me down the path of utilizing something the young mind has difficulty hacking, which my solutions involve what I know best… anatomy/physiology. The problem I have had with biometrics is privacy and the already real problem of mass databases/surveillance of facial recognition, DNA, finger prints, voice recognition, etc. Working in medicine, I can say there is nothing with regard to electrophysiologic identification. Yes it is would be possible, but that program would have to start from ground zero and in my opinion would be the most difficult biological marker I can think of to effectively use for any nefarious mass surveillance program. Additionally it appears to be an easy way to differentiate a large percentage of the population’s estimated age.
Here are some examples:
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/51/3/485.full.pdf

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I’m not really sure what there is to disagree with, though, @lynda. A lot of this discussion seems rooted in politics. Each post like a mini-manifesto for a personal utopia.

But we’re talking about technology. A tool. From my understanding of the network, I can create a closed garden application as easily as I can create a purely open source, free service. Github and Google, Facebook and Diaspora are all still possible.

I can build anything I want on Maidsafe. That’s the point. I can create a browser that’ll only let me see images of Robert Pattinson, only from the film Cosmopolis, and it’ll only do it on Tuesday evening. The web browser will do nothing else. Because maybe that’s what I want.

My suggestion is, instead of using Maidsafe as a soapbox as to why parental mechanisms lead to totalitarian governments, let’s just explain what it does honestly. The entire world can get behind an open network protocol that lowers the cost of storage and distributing information for cheap. But when you inject personal politics, you just isolate people. Even people who might agree with you. Because deep down, we all want the same things, to learn and be heard.

The purpose of Maidsafe seems to be to allow the masses to decide what’s right for them. That includes shutting out information to themselves or their children, unfortunately. And there’s literally nothing you can do about that.

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Freedom isn’t “free”. The cost is vigilance and risk management.
You can have freedom but you still have to be responsible and if you aren’t then the consequences are all yours. We need a platform flexible enough to allow the individual user to determine how to express their freedom in the way they choose at the level of risk they are accustomed to.

I don’t expect every user of SAFE Network to be a freedom fighter willing to die for it. I think if you’re trying to scale to 1 billion users then it’s unrealistic to expect anything like that. I also don’t think you truly grasp why the Internet turned bad.

The Internet didn’t turn bad because of applications. It turned bad because you don’t own the infrastructure, the apps. Your ISP is actually what conducts the surveillance on you (perhaps they always did) and you don’t own it. The idea that if you stopped going on Facebook that the surveillance would stop is naive.

Even if you use SAFE Network it doesn’t solve everything. It gives you new options as well as new risks. New opportunities to generate good press by focusing the attention of the masses on the positive uses but if it’s political to the point of being marginalized then it’s Freenet all over again. Freenet was great but maybe 10,000 people in the world ever used it because it was designed to fulfill a very specific political niche but not much else.

SAFE Network has an opportunity to scale up and gain mass support. The stars are aligned with Snowden, network neutrality, and a bunch of political issues that the majority of society agrees on. The majority of society also wants freedom and part of that is the freedom to choose the specific flavor of freedom they want.

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It’s a sign of our times that Ideals that millions have given their lives to defend are now waved away as just so much utopian “blah blah”. I expect we will one day pay a heavy price for this tendency.

But for purposes of this discussion, there is a difference between adding trivial configuration elements to an application to make it do one thing versus another, and the notion of constraining the infrastructure so that it cannot be used by anyone to do something that some “authority” considers to be wrong or illicit. The former is not an issue. The latter very much is.

The entire discussion hinges on the issue of External Enforceability - anyone can do what they like “downstream” of themselves, to make MaidSafe suitable for their own personal use, or the use of those who knowingly consent to that purpose. But it should be utterly impossible to use MaidSafe to impose your will by any means on any other free agent against their will.

Put simply, no one may determine for another whether or how MaidSafe may be used, not by decree, or by stealth. Given that perfection is impossible, to the extent that MaidSafe is compromised to allow that possibility, then to some extent it has failed.

In the most perfect sense, MaidSafe use should be undetectable, and unstoppable, in the same exact way that any conversation between two people conducted face to face in a private place should be outwardly undetectable and unstoppable. Ultimately, this means that any dictator or totalitarian regime may pass whatever laws they like, but those laws will be utterly unenforceable, and therefore of no consequence, by virtue of the MaidSafe infrastructure.

Freedom is not a “political” notion, it is a Human Right. It is above politics, since it is essential to human existence, like air, or water. But human rights are only as good as one’s ability to defend them. MaidSafe or something like it is vital to the defense of almost every right we possess.

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It’s possible something was miscommunicated, because this keeps coming up:

To the best of my knowledge, no one is changing the infrastructure. And no one wants to. Seems like everyone is in agreement that anything that filters content will be built on top of the infrastructure, and folks will opt-in to it. If you’re a child, the parents will just enforce it as best they can in their home.

Go say that to someone at a bar. Go grab a brew, find someone, chat them up, and say that. I guarantee the person will think to themselves “Ugh, here we go with another political rant!” Freedom is linked to politics. And the language used looks like dissent, something linked to political discussions.

Talking about freedom like that is useless because freedom is something everyone wants. No one here is brilliant for pointing that out. It’s masturbatory. We spread ideas by trusting other people to learn, not by speaking at them, telling them what’s important. Example:

This doesn’t promote discussion, it promotes arguments.

Maidsafe needs to be a discussion, not an argument. That’s how you win people over.

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You should direct your rude comments to Peter Greste, an Australian journalist currently serving 20 years in an Egyptian prison for the crime of reporting on the crackdown on democracy there…

If you can’t reach Peter, you might try getting in contact with Barrett Brown.  Perhaps you’ve heard of him… he is currently languishing in a Texas prison facing a possible 100 year Federal sentence for pasting a publicly available link to a publicly available web site…

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/barrett-brown-faces-105-years-in-jail-20130905

Barrett may be unavailable for comment, due to prison rules restricting his access to computers.

Alternatively, you might also try contacting the Chinese man arrested recently because a critical tweet he made was retweeted 500 times.

Or Justin Carter, who is now in jail on $500,000 bond for posting a frivolous Facebook post.

I don’t know what kind of sheltered existence you lead, but these people would definitely not regard discussion about free speech and safety on the Internet as at all “masturbatory”.  For myself, I also strongly object to your use of crude and disgusting language to trivialize what is a life and death issue for many.  This issue is actually at the very heart of why so many of us are supporting MaidSafe so determinedly, and you seem to be completely out of step on this vital point.

If these examples of the seriousness of this issue don’t convince you, nothing will. I have nothing more to say on this topic.

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I mean masturbatory in the context of this forum, because everyone here agrees. Or “preaching to the choir” to use another turn of phrase.

But really, more than anything, the topic was “heading off bad press” about a “parental control mechanism.” For example, so a child doesn’t stumble onto graphic rape-simulation dungeon porn.

Now, of course these cases you linked to matter.

But my concern is that politically charged rhetoric can lead to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Using specific language can strongly imply a motivation. When someone feels like they’re being scolded, talked down to, or commanded, they’ll shut down. They’ve studied that when strongly religious people are presented with hard facts that disprove their historical believes, those facts strengthen their already held belief. It’s because we hate being told what to do, we hate authority. It’s in our programming.

If Maidsafe does what it claims to do, then there’s no need to preach. People need to be aware of it, but not from spewed gospel.

I would say I’m in step on the importance of this as a whole. I’m out of step with you on this particular thread. Those stories are extremely important. Everyone thinks so. It’s on ABC (so their advertisers thought it was important enough to draw ratings) and in Rolling Stones. But I don’t think they matter nearly as much in this particular context (the topic we’re in).

So I still stand on my thoughts. If you want to head off bad press concerning parental control mechanisms, you don’t soapbox about the political implications of Maidsafe. You don’t give long-winded details into the importance of free speech and anti-censorship. You don’t make it an activist’s weapon.

You explain that it’s the backbone for a new way to hold and distribute information online. That content cannot be taken down easily, and that’s part of the importance. It’s meant to have things built on top. So people will naturally develop safeguards for filtering content for the user’s end. They’ll do this because there’s probably money to made in it, and there are people who believe that parents should have control over what young children consume. The difference is that there’s more weight on the end user to police their household and less on the government.

EDIT: Also, @lynda, I don’t mean to be aggressive in-your-face about it. I apologize for that. That’s not my intention at all. I think we’re all in agreement about this stuff, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.

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Apology accepted.

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wow what a horrible and insulting thing to say of the people who are creating such a world-changing, innovative system!

I can’t believe your attitude!!

Controls of any type slow down human progress, and I sincerely hope (but am not worried) that the SAFE Network will not be hindered by any annoying parents’ worries.

The sooner young people learn about the world, the better they learn to cope with/handle every facet of it.

Witholding things from people (young or old) only makes them stupider and less capable human beings.

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Hey W,

Do you believe in free will? The will of a parent to bring their child up the way they think gives the best advantage…sort of anarchist.

It would make for a great documentary study, two families…one open access, the other utilizing systems builders have devised to cater for educational customization.

It’s not about restricting the network protocols, quite the opposite, it’s about the possibility of building anything on top of them…which includes mechanisms to allow a parent to educate and raise their child how they see fit.

Developer Viv comments on it thus:

Just as a thought people often ask us, how would children be protected in a network like this where anyone could post anything they want. For all we know in a while a whole new set of apps could come along that can provide content that are deemed safe for children. Now how they do this “safe for children” is a whole other topic since these apps doing the filter could either be valuable or pretty much block you from seeing content they don’t want you to for their own benefit.

Now if we assume, We got an app that does filter on some agreed terms to get content only appropriate based on a criteria, I’d be completely fine in it imposing it’s own url scheme such as

child-safe::any-name

Now this app’s code can be alerted based on the child- prefix and then check if the url entered matches it’s whitelist and show content by essentially going to a safe://public-name in the background. While it’s pretty much just a forward the app’s doing, as far a user’s are concerned, this app’s helping them keep their children safe from content they don’t want them seeing.

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You’re not being realistic. It’s precisely because I’m not an authoritarian that I don’t tell other people how to use SAFE Network. We don’t all have the same definition of security.

I’m not giving an endorsement to any particular philosophical outlook for raising children. I think it’s not up to me to determine any of this and it’s not really up to SAFE developers either.

What SAFE developers can do is design the software in such a way so that the parents can determine for themselves how to interact with SAFE Network. In fact if I’m using SAFE Network I don’t want to be forced to interact with it in ways which go against my wishes and I don’t want to force freedom down everyone’s throats in ways they don’t appreciate.

Give people the kind of freedom they desire, the kind of security they desire, and let it be customized decentralized order.

If I’ve insulted any developers with my rudeness then I apologize for that. I know it’s difficult work. I’m advocating for flexibility in how users can interact with SAFE Network only.

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Decentralized can mean the terror of the majority, so that’s very unsettling.

I’ve seen a number of horrendous ideas in this thread. On the one hand it’s quite incredible (considering what this is all about), but on the other (considering the large number of busybodies in our society) it is to be expected.

Parental controls should not be only decentralized, but also individual and client-side only.

I couldn’t care less what “the media” think (who the heck is “the media”?).

I want to be able to publish whatever information I want and at the same time I wouldn’t mind to be able to block whatever information I want as long as I can do that on my own client. Anything less would be a total and complete failure.

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Of course but you’re arguing a strawman. When did anyone say there would be a voting system to determine any of this? Decentralized order would mean you can opt in to any kind of ruleset that you want. Other people can opt into a similar ruleset and those who abide by similar rulesets would represent a decentralized order.

Tyranny isn’t really possible because there isn’t any authority or enforcement. It’s just giving people the choices to interact with SAFE Network however they want.

I’ve seen a number of horrendous ideas in this thread. On the one hand it’s quite incredible (considering what this is all about), but on the other (considering the large number of busybodies in our society) it is to be expected.

If something in specific is a bad idea it would help if you point it out. If you just say you see “a number” it doesn’t tell us which ideas are bad to you or why. More than likely you saw ideas which were communicated poorly or which you misunderstood.

Parental controls should not be only decentralized, but also individual and client-side only.

Then we agree. In fact probably we all agree on that so where is the disagreement?

I couldn’t care less what “the media” think (who the heck is “the media”?).

The media matters because they decide if the technology gets adopted or banned. I’m not saying we have to submit to them but we do have to care about public perception. If you don’t care at all then perhaps the people involved today will be the only people who ever get involved because the media is what is slowing the adoption of cryptocurrency technology in general with (drug money, money laundering, terrorist finance) and other memes surrounding these technologies.

I want to be able to publish whatever information I want and at the same time I wouldn’t mind to be able to block whatever information I want as long as I can do that on my own client. Anything less would be a total and complete failure.

That is what we all want more or less. But you’re not going to be able to block content completely from your own client without cooperation from other clients who have a similar interest in not seeing certain content. So as a cooperative a group that agrees they don’t want to see child pornography for example wouldn’t have to see it but it would only apply to people who join the cooperative.

So if you don’t join then you’ll have to take your chances. But you cannot do it all client side because how exactly would you do a web of trust to determine the quality or acceptability of content if you don’t group up with people of similar sensibilities who can build up your parental filter?

There might be some other ways of doing it but every way I can think of involves opting into a network of like minded similar interested individuals.

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I could partially (and I don’t know if any system that has a 100% hit rate and doesn’t create many false positives) do it based on keywords and images I marked as offensive myself. Sure that’d be slower and maybe stupider than the collective distributed system, but I train my own email spam filters and that works well for me. After a while they work reasonably well. A parent could spend 2-3 hours visiting the usual banned content (porn sites, etc.) to teach a client-slide plugin what’s acceptable and what’s not.

Now if you want to ask me “how do you ensure your kids use the same rules everywhere”: browsers and other utilities allow you to sync bookmarks across different devices. The same could be done with MaidSAFE client-side filters/rules.
If you want to ask me how can one force his children to follow those rules, it’s simple: it’s up to them. How does one “force” (or persuade) one’s kids to do anything? If they pay me I can come up with something useful, but they’d have to pay for the plugin I’d (pay someone to) create for them.

Decentralized: okay, so it’d be client-side blocking. But it’s still worth to consider whether “server” (or farmer, I don’t know what’s the right term here) nodes should transmit this “ratings” information. #1, it’s a matter of principle, and #2 it’s forcing users to contribute to something unrelated to actual useful work (unless they can opt-in, with the default being off), and #3 it means you’d be forcing people to help distribute ratings against their own content.

Horrendous ideas: I think that should be obvious. Public ID’s, content take down, reporting (to whom???), and so on.

Maybe do-gooders can create a committee of concerned parents and endow it with a few million of their MaidSAFE tokens that can be used to offer a bounty for a client-side API for distributed client-side content flagging without (effectively) taxing the rest of users through a mis-allocation of development resources? I would support that.

I am not going to comment on this thread any more (not because of you, I’m just saying because I won’t reply to anyone’s additional questions or comments) because to me it is crystal clear how this should and shouldn’t work.
As I don’t make any decisions, I can only provide my opinion/suggestions which I did. Other than that it’s not productive to argue who said what (again, this too isn’t related to your comment - this is my comment on the huge number of comments on this topic).

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LOL, that’s funny.
I’m happy I didn’t get run over by that Government Motors vehicle.

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It’s a new community created badge system. I love it and I’m almost tempted to not post here anymore either…

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I never advocated any of those ideas.

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You’re right. I meant by others on the thread, not by you!