General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Iceland campaigns to restrict internet porn [View all]redgreenandblue
(2,088 posts)The internet is decentralized. Websites are hosted in different countries, with different laws, constitutional standards etc. . It would be literal hell trying to enforce decency standards on the entire web. It is hard enough to get everyone to comply with shutting down the stuff that everyone agrees upon to be illegal, such as child porn or platforms to organize terrorist attacks, but how would you do it with content which everyone has wildly different opinions about? Who would oversee it? How would these people be accountable?
The only practical way of doing this that I could think of is what China is doing: Total centralized control over the content of websites, plus isolating the web of your country from the web outside of it. But this goes against the very idea of having an internet and is seen as inconsistent with freedom of speech in many parts of the world.
On the other hand, a "white-list" is pretty easy to set up. One can easily build up a network of tightly regulated websites with content specifically for kids, distribute specialised browsers that can only access such sites, leave it up to the parents to make sure their kids use only such browsers, and kick people out who don't adhere to the standards.
Technically and in the context of the broader implications, the "white-list" approach is just way more feasible.