How do parental filters work? Is there a list of all adult content sites? Does someone manually add them, or is it automated?
In: Technology
Combination of human and automation. There are lists that get published that can be automatically added to filters. There are certain words in text and/or URLs that get blocked automatically, like sex, porn, etc.
As an aside, these automated filters caused major issues for my dad’s former company when implemented on the company’s computer network — they were a meat producer, and parts of their business involved dealing in chicken meat parts, but the system flagged terms like breasts and thighs which were necessary words to be able to use in the context of chicken.
For TV and Cable/Sattelite I assume that channels MUST have a tag that describes them (KID, REALITY, MOVIE, ADULT etc.) and every single one has those tags. When you turn on the parental lock those with tag ADULT or PORN get locked and don’t show on the list or require password.
For internet sites there could be a list of them or same system with tags that are updated periodically to provide best protection.
Well there are 2 ways to do it. Less restrictive and more restrictive.
The less restrictive works almost like you said except there’s a few someones who curate the list (depending on parental control solution).
The more restrictive works the same way except it blocks everything except a list of allowed, non-adult websites.
It depends on the system used to monitor the adult sites. Some are manually added by the parent(s) themselves, some are automated to block known adult sites (or games, or whatever else needs to be blocked), others are a massive list that’s added to manually.
It can also depend on where you’re monitoring, too. For example, school districts can have district-wide filters based on an automatic list, with individual schools adding their own rules into that.
For the web there is a standard for tagging content, which search engines can read.
Filtering adult content is relatively easy because publishers mostly want to be filtered honestly.
Edit: https://www.rtalabel.org/
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