Recently I noticed late at night and during the day ads notifying parents on the dangers of online porn. Even gone so far as to provide a free filter you can install on your computer to protect your children.

I think there are several things wrong with this advertising campaign.
1) It’s too late. Since the creation of the Internet porn has been a problem, it was actually more of a problem 15 years ago than it is now.
2) The ads themselves advertise porn. Imagine a nine year old sees that ad and thinks I might look that up.
3) It’s designed to scare parents and with the free filter the parents are meant to think a liberal government will look after them – its just plain paternalistic.

More paranoid people will think this porn filter may be the “thin end of the wedge” to more extreme anti-porn measures – similar to the great firewall of China. This could lead to a new age of censorship.

I think the best solution to prevent your kids looking at porn is supervision – have your computer in an open part of the house. The embarrassment factor alone would prevent it.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Our sad culture, Politics, The Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.