Blogger Power: Safeguard the Web for Children
June 18, 2007 by Lillie
Mig at Pamil Visions’ eWritings introduced me to Blogger Power: Safeguard the Web for Children.
The project calls on bloggers to ask adult sites to require password-protected access to safeguard children from encountering porn. Jon Howard at Force for Good and Michaela (Mig) Lica at Pamil Visions started the project to bring together the power of bloggers to protect children.
Here is Blogger Power’s common-sense request to Webmasters of adult sites:
Please require a password-protected login before allowing even free access to explicit adult content. We understand that selling porn is your business and we respect your right to make a legal living. But understand our legitimate concerns and work with us. You already have the “warning adult content” on your websites. Yet kids, who are not legal customers of your product, ignore the warning. So to prevent them from having direct access to explicit images, texts and sounds, the simplest way is to have a password-protected login. No more “free tours” before a visitor supplies basic information
If you have any doubt about the need for this, read the alarming statistics in Blogger Power’s Open Letter to Bloggers. I hope you will join the project and call on adult sites to act responsibly to safeguard children.
[tags]Blogger Power, safeguard the Web for children[/tags]
Wow, Lillie, thank you for blogging about this.
It means so much to me. Did you know that in Germany we already have two or three sites who liked the idea and they do just fine? Cannot give any links, sorry! Besides, they belong to the same person. This is a small step for Blogger Power, but it does show that people understand our reasons.
Mig,
I’m so happy at least one person is paying attention. One small step leads to another … and another … and another.
Great initiative by Mig.
Yes, it is, Diogenes. Children are exposed to so much every day – protecting from porn sites is common sense.
What a great idea! I hope that more and more sites are willing to do this to protect children. They are exposed to enough without giving them easy (and often accidental) access to porn as well.
Michi,
You’re so right about kids being exposed to so much just in day-to-day life.
Okay, I will be the cynic here. Do you think that porn peddlers are really interested in protecting children? After all, they are doing their part to ruin the lives of men and women the world over.
I am not saying that some sites won’t comply, but we’re talking about people who think nothing of pulling mankind down to the lowest common denominator.
Matt,
I suspect you’re right that most of the porn sites don’t care who they harm. When I first got online, I was so naive that I tried to unsubscribe to spam.
Suddenly porn kept popping up in window after window – if I managed to close one down, several more opened up. There was no way to stop it short of shutting down my computer. I don’t know if the sites do that anymore because I learned very quickly you don’t respond to spam. But it was an awful experience to keep seeing these vile pictures and not being able to stop them. I hate the thought of children being exposed to that.
However, Mig said one porn purveyor with a couple or three sites had responded – not much in the overall scheme of things but the Internet is a teensy bit safer for kids as a result.
Although I doubt a post on my little ole blog will make a significant difference, it can’t hurt. And if helps save one child from being exposed to porn, it’s worth it.
One thing I want to add to the conversation is this: there is an excellent filtering program out there by the name of Naomi that works wonders. It is free and when placed on the computer, it will immediately close the browser when an unseemly site shows up. We have it installed on the computer our children use and I can personally attest to its effectiveness — believe me I ran it through the paces to ensure that porn could not show up.
Matt,
Thanks for the info. It will be useful to parents who monitor their children’s Internet activities.
If all parents were as informed and interested as you, there wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, there are far too many parents who are uninformed and far too many children who are unsupervised because their parents are too busy, too drunk, or too self-centered.
As a parent, my initial reaction is to applaud this. However, as a blogger I find myself wondering where the limits would be drawn. As Lillie wrote, no doubt intending it to be meant another way, “one small step leads to another… and another.”
I can’t help but wonder if, after sites posting adult images are forced to have password-protected front pages, would sites using occasional adult language be next? And who is to define what constitutes “adult language” if that’s the case?
Kate,
Blogger Power is not suggesting that anyone be “forced” to do or not do anything. This is not a censorship movement – it is simply a request for businesspeople who sell content not suitable for children to voluntarily add safeguards to their sites to make it more difficult for children to access the material.
Who decides what constitutes adult material? The purveyors themselves – after all, they advertise their material for adults. If they sell material that they themselves advertise as triple X, hard-core, whatever … they know it isn’t appropriate for children.
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