New porn filters ban sex education & sexual health websites

[acallaghan]

From the BBC: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25430582

There'll be lots of legitimate sites that are positive about sex and relationships that'll be banned.

A classic case of politicians wanting to be seen responding to a campaign and pushing companies to do something that isn't technically possible. Any such filter is bound to block sites that should not be blocked and/or fail to block sites that should be blocked. Accuracy may improve over time but it will never be 100%.

My worry is that many parents will think these filters keep their children safe and therefore won't take any other precautions.

Breast Cancer research
Naked Eye Astronomy
Nude heels in fashion websites

all sites that have been blocked by badly configured systems

It's going to take us right back to the bad old sledgehammer to crack egg days, isn't it? I work in mental health and I remember having to chase our IT because our psychotherapists could not access online journals containing scientific research on sexual abuse survivors.

The problem is with parents allowing their DCs unsupervised Internet access from a very young age. Which is a crazy thing to do.