Something my mother mentioned yesterday in her commentary
about the censorship of Netflix sparked a thought in my mind. She said
“I
think it is strange that on a country level there could be so much censorship
from outside but that the allowed video sites have so much Chinese smut that
you can't allow kids to watch a Scooby doo and not worry that it won't
automatically start porn when it is finished. I talked to my Chinese friends
with children and they say there is no filtering system to make net safe for
kids.”
Why is it that China blocks Google, Netflix, sites on
E-bikes and recipes, but doesn’t offer sites with parental controls to make the
internet a safe place for children? The Communist justification for censorship
and blocking is to protect the country’s general public and to protect the
Party. But it is being neglectful of protecting children.
It is a surprise that parental controls aren’t hugely common
in China. Parents in China are over protective of children to the extreme due
to the One Child Policy, so I would think that child censorship would be a top
priority. I assume that most computers
have the parental control settings that mine possesses. But
computer/laptop controls only limit the amount of time on the internet or what
games can be played. It has no effect on internet.
Google Chrome apparently has parental settings according to
the Youtube video I have mentioned at the bottom of this post. Youtube and
Netflix also have methods of limiting what can be accessed by certain users,
but this is useless within China. Mozilla Firefox has the ability to block and
unblock certain sites for with parental controls but this doesn’t enable
parents to block certain content on
sites (like the streaming sites my mom mentioned). Internet Explorer also
enables users to restrict content that might contain violence, bad language or
nudity. But again, these are more limited to sites that are directly meant to
have these things (like porn sites). But a site that has a mix and isn’t url’d
or titled to have nudity or violence probably won’t be restricted.
Again I ask, why doesn’t China offer more methods of parental control on the approved sites? It seems like the things that they aren’t blocking are worse than many of the things they are. Porn on children’s cartoon sites is far worse than the cookie recipe they have blocked. Is the government assuming that parents will censor their own children? Or does the government believe that if it is something it deems safe for adults then it is safe for children? I admit to being very confused by what I would call the uneven censorship within China. If you are protecting the citizens from the things without, shouldn’t it protect them from things within as well?
People in the Western world are generally strong believers
in having freedom of speech and media, including on the internet. Censorship
online would make any average citizen in America or the UK furious. But could
it not be argued that parents are invoking censorship on children when they
block certain games or movies from them? We all think this is an acceptable
form of censorship, because it is protecting children from seeing things beyond
their understanding or age. But to give a different perspective, is that not
what the Chinese government is also doing? Protecting its population from what
it deems dangerous. I just think that the protection should extend to Chinese children, and should include censorship on their own sites.
Links
Youtube video explaining how to use parental controls on
Google
Mozilla Firefox parental controls: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-and-unblock-websites-parental-controls-firef
Internet Explorer Web Restrictions: http://www.wikihow.com/Restrict-Web-Browsing-Using-Internet-Explorer
This is an interesting article about parental controls
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Researcher-Says-Parental-Control-Is-Bad-Let-Kids-Run-Wild-432752.shtml
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