Oh, good grief: the LJ "adult content" feature.
Unlike most of you, I don't read LJ News, so when several of the recent posts on my friends list started warning me that "You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors," I figured that everyone was doing a crazy new meme or you guys were really getting into the hard core porn.
And then I clicked through the first one. It was a post about --
cuddling.
Yes, cuddling.
Then the second. A post about --
teddy bears. And no, this post did not go where you would think an "adult content" teddy bear post should be going.
I blinked, then figured this was some obscure LJ joke that I'd missed what with being a bit busy with real life stuff this week and trying to be Agile and Scrummy while also being Search Engine Optimized, which is quite a trick. (You either know the meaning of the last part of that sentence, or you don't. Never mind if you don't.)
But no.
As it turns out, this is part of LJ's shining new feature which allows posters to flag their posts as having adult content, divided into two categories: suitable for readers over 14, or suitable for readers over 18. The dividing line here isn't clear. And -- you can flag other people's posts too. That's the problematic part.
Now, perhaps I've just been lucky, but in well over five years on Lj I've only seen about three or four posts with potentially inappropriate or not work safe content appear on my friends list that were not a) locked and filtered to appropriate people and b) behind a lj-cut clearly labelling them as locked and filtered. So I have to question just how necessary this feature is to begin with. Sure, Lj has some....interesting stuff, to say the least, but these communities have done a laudable job of keeping the objectionable content locked to users who at least say that they're 18 or older.
Which brings me to my next problem with this feature:
To access any of this "adult content" all I had to do was click a button asserting that I was over 14, or in the case of box_in_the_box that I was over 18, and with that, I could access the supposedly objectionable posts, just like that, with absolutely no confirmation other than my say-so that I was indeed over 14 or over 18. A six year old could easily get pass this -- and I'll add that a statement warning me that I had to be 18 or older to read a specific post was exactly the sort of statement that would have made the 13 year old me determined to read the post.
So the feature doesn't even block adult content: all it does is wave a flag saying "WOOHOO! ADULT CONTENT! OVER HERE, KIDS!" In the meantime, because it's "adult content," I have to click on the link, and then, in some cases, assure Lj that yes, yes I really am old enough to read about teddy bears.
But that still dances around my main problem with this feature, which is, simply put:
The Internet, and the computer, is not a parent.
It is not my job, as a blogger, to protect your children. First, from the admittedly unstatistical sampling of my friends with children, I have made the following discoveries: 1) parents differ on what they believe is appropriate for their children to view/watch/read/be aware of, and 2) children mature at different rates, and what may be appropriate for one eight year old may not be appropriate for another eight year old, which is a judgement that a parent, not me, is in a far better position to make. I don't know your children.. I don't know what they are capable or not capable of dealing with, and I don't know what you want them to deal with. That's up to you, and them. Not me. Most of my friends would be rightfully offended (and alarmed) if I started to tell them what they should and should not allow their children to view or read. After all, they know their kids. I don't.
(I'll add that yes, I did find some inappropriate material when I was a kid -- I read Wifey when I was seven and didn't understand most of it, and I found some Penthouses when I was able to understand most of it, and I survived. I suspect I'm not alone in this.)
And if, as a parent, you have concerns about what your kids might be doing/seeing on the Internet, you do have a couple of solutions: One, you can be in the area when your kids are surfing the net, and two, you can use the handy little "history" tab on Microsoft Explorer and Firefox and see what sites they're heading to.
So, to sum up: the feature doesn't mark actual adult content, doesn't prevent kids from viewing actual adult content, and tries to create an inappropiate parenting role. Can we kill it now, please?
(On a minor note, and I don't mean to offend the people that posted the cuddling and teddy bears things, but when I click on something labelled as "adult content" I wanna see, you know, adult content, which your posts, no offense, weren't. Can we have some actual adult content for these posts, please? Thanks :))
And then I clicked through the first one. It was a post about --
cuddling.
Yes, cuddling.
Then the second. A post about --
teddy bears. And no, this post did not go where you would think an "adult content" teddy bear post should be going.
I blinked, then figured this was some obscure LJ joke that I'd missed what with being a bit busy with real life stuff this week and trying to be Agile and Scrummy while also being Search Engine Optimized, which is quite a trick. (You either know the meaning of the last part of that sentence, or you don't. Never mind if you don't.)
But no.
As it turns out, this is part of LJ's shining new feature which allows posters to flag their posts as having adult content, divided into two categories: suitable for readers over 14, or suitable for readers over 18. The dividing line here isn't clear. And -- you can flag other people's posts too. That's the problematic part.
Now, perhaps I've just been lucky, but in well over five years on Lj I've only seen about three or four posts with potentially inappropriate or not work safe content appear on my friends list that were not a) locked and filtered to appropriate people and b) behind a lj-cut clearly labelling them as locked and filtered. So I have to question just how necessary this feature is to begin with. Sure, Lj has some....interesting stuff, to say the least, but these communities have done a laudable job of keeping the objectionable content locked to users who at least say that they're 18 or older.
Which brings me to my next problem with this feature:
To access any of this "adult content" all I had to do was click a button asserting that I was over 14, or in the case of box_in_the_box that I was over 18, and with that, I could access the supposedly objectionable posts, just like that, with absolutely no confirmation other than my say-so that I was indeed over 14 or over 18. A six year old could easily get pass this -- and I'll add that a statement warning me that I had to be 18 or older to read a specific post was exactly the sort of statement that would have made the 13 year old me determined to read the post.
So the feature doesn't even block adult content: all it does is wave a flag saying "WOOHOO! ADULT CONTENT! OVER HERE, KIDS!" In the meantime, because it's "adult content," I have to click on the link, and then, in some cases, assure Lj that yes, yes I really am old enough to read about teddy bears.
But that still dances around my main problem with this feature, which is, simply put:
The Internet, and the computer, is not a parent.
It is not my job, as a blogger, to protect your children. First, from the admittedly unstatistical sampling of my friends with children, I have made the following discoveries: 1) parents differ on what they believe is appropriate for their children to view/watch/read/be aware of, and 2) children mature at different rates, and what may be appropriate for one eight year old may not be appropriate for another eight year old, which is a judgement that a parent, not me, is in a far better position to make. I don't know your children.. I don't know what they are capable or not capable of dealing with, and I don't know what you want them to deal with. That's up to you, and them. Not me. Most of my friends would be rightfully offended (and alarmed) if I started to tell them what they should and should not allow their children to view or read. After all, they know their kids. I don't.
(I'll add that yes, I did find some inappropriate material when I was a kid -- I read Wifey when I was seven and didn't understand most of it, and I found some Penthouses when I was able to understand most of it, and I survived. I suspect I'm not alone in this.)
And if, as a parent, you have concerns about what your kids might be doing/seeing on the Internet, you do have a couple of solutions: One, you can be in the area when your kids are surfing the net, and two, you can use the handy little "history" tab on Microsoft Explorer and Firefox and see what sites they're heading to.
So, to sum up: the feature doesn't mark actual adult content, doesn't prevent kids from viewing actual adult content, and tries to create an inappropiate parenting role. Can we kill it now, please?
(On a minor note, and I don't mean to offend the people that posted the cuddling and teddy bears things, but when I click on something labelled as "adult content" I wanna see, you know, adult content, which your posts, no offense, weren't. Can we have some actual adult content for these posts, please? Thanks :))