h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ooh, you're right swl, that's true in England too Although, I don't think that had come in when I worked in elections. Not sure how far down the food chain of elected representatives it extends.

Mol

Hoo here's an example of a man being threatened on social media and it being taken seriously.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/08/09/tory-mp-mike-weatherley-receives-death-threat-over-opposition-to-russian-anti-gay-laws/

Apropos of nothing the tweeter in question is apparently an Icelandic lesbian, though given the number of internet lesbians who've been outed as men, I'd take that with a pinch of salt.

I don't often agree with Hoovooloo but in this instance I do.Just bear in mind that if a family member indulges in illegal practices on the internet that you pay for,that you will be liable and culpable.Of course you could claim it's the government's business to police your connection to make sure you don't break any rules..

Just how far do we/you want the government to be involved in your/our lives?

I'm not against report abuse buttons on social media but I am annoyed by parents who don't want to have the inevitable confrontation if their child is bullied or is a bully to others by actually cutting off their internet privileges.

As I frequently said to my two when I did check up that they were where they said they would be.'It's not you I don't trust it's the rest of the universe I'm suspicious about.'

Oh, we've had confrontation. Sic now knows that referring to the inhabitants of an entire town as 'greasy f----rs' in a tweet is Not Acceptable.

The logistics of enforcing an internet ban make me glad we haven't had to go that far. I think we did confiscate her phone at one point (can't remember the exact circumstances). But a lot of homework is done on-line, and almost all the rest on a computer and handed in by email*, so a full ban would involve supervised sessions after I get home from work. Not impossible and we'd do it if necessary but probably the threat would be enough.

Mol

* Yes. Really. And no I don't know what families do if they have no internet.

I think there's something to be said for being boring. You don't have to see your picture on the covets of the tabloids in the supermarket week after week. Being under that much scrutiny [much of it deeply warped and unfair] can send a person over the edge.

People work out whatever arrangements they want when it comes to using the Internet and the social networks. In many other fields of endeavor, there are wise elders who stand ready to give the benefit of what they've learned from experience, but the Internet is younger than roughly half the population of most Western countries, and sites like Facebook and Twitter barely existed at the turn of the millennium. How do you accumulate wisdom of negotiating their pitfalls when they've been around such a short time? The Internet itself has forced a reckoning regarding written communication. Emoticons have been invented to soften the blow of posts and emails that otherwise would be baffling to recipients. Not everyone is willing to use them, and even some who are willing might not get it right.

Hundreds of millions of people galloped into the social media sites. Who knows how many will want to still be there ten years form now?

Proud to be boring, me. I *like* boring. Excitement, adventure and really wild things? Sounds awful.

For someone who leans politically and fiscally so far over to the left that my earlobe is brushing the ground (it's a good trick - strategically placed fishing line so the audience can't see it, they really believe you're levitating...) I'm practically Tory on certain very limited social issues.

And policing an internet connection isn't that hard, *IF* you can be bothered to be better at computers than the children you volunteered to take responsibility for. There are plenty of software packages out there which can sit between the user and the big bad world and only allow access to a whitelist of allowed sites. Homework - allowed. H2G2 - allowed. Wikipedia, IMDb, the BBC, the Guardian - knock yourselves out. And if they get blocked and want access to something, they can ask, and I will almost invariably just go "sure". But for things they know are dodgy, they won't ask.

And yes, there are ways round it, but here's the thing - not all kids are Matthew Broderick in "War Games". Most kids are lazy, and if you stonewall their home internet connection, the only way round it most of them can be bothered to find is a public wifi connection or, more likely, the house of a friend with more numb-headed parents. It's a much easier option than learning how to hack, particularly if the system you're hacking was set up by someone who grew up idolising Matthew Broderick in "War Games".

Thus it ever was. We didn't even HAVE a VCR when I was a kid, so if I wanted to watch scratchy fourth generation copies of really terrible porn I had to go round to [Personal details removed by Moderator] house. (And by "really terrible" I don't mean perverse or illegal, I just mean really poor quality). Of course, this massively reduced the, ahem, entertainment value, because since I'm from the north and didn't go to a private school, I'm entirely heterosexual and any concept of actually, ahem, responding to porn in the presence of another male was obviously not something that would even cross my mind.

And yes - I acknowledge that this policy means that my children's consumption of illicit material will happen outside my house.

Good.

That's where it's *supposed* to happen. Home is the place they come back to where they know they're safe.

Ah yes, the dog eared Razzle in the park bushes. Kids today don't know they're born. I don't particularly like censorship but I do think this generation have it too easy with ready access to streaming hard core pornography. In my day it took a lot of work, planning and luck to catch a glimpse of something you'd find on the front page of "Hello" nowadays.

So I say put porn behind fiendishly difficult barriers - the challenge is in circumventing these and it makes the results far more rewarding.

"Sic now knows that referring to the inhabitants of an entire town as 'greasy f----rs' in a tweet is Not Acceptable."

Even if the town is Hull?

but how many of the girls online are accessing all this porn?

Half of them (that admit to it) apparently -

"A recent report by the Deputy Children's Commissioner found that out of a whole cohort of Year 9 pupils 100% of the boys were accessing pornography (and 50% of the girls)" http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/pippa-smith/pornography-on-the-school-syllabus_b_3208885.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

wow, that's a lot.

And it also shows that Year 9 understand how to fill out surveys presented to them by "Stupid Adults"

Actually it was Daventry. So I could understand the sentiment. But it's not good form.

Hm. Well, ok, we could install Parental Controls. But it seems a bit draconian and I'm not sure it's teaching them to be independent web surfers. I wouldn't do it unless there was a strong indication we needed to, and I'd rather take the 'do the homework in the kitchen' approach first because I think it would have more impact here.

When they first started going on-line (Club Penguin and Cbeebies level, so at pre-school age), they were always using the computer in the kitchen (ie with direct supervision). Over a period of, well, years, I suppose, they were gradually allowed to take the laptop to their room from time to time. Any new sites they signed up to required parental consent, and we've always taken a friendly interest in what they've been doing on-line, which means we've also been able to ask questions and offer advice.

I'm not saying we've always got it right (I'm thinking of the occasion the girls googled 'sexing hamsters' after our hamsters had babies - I almost fainted from horror when they told me, but they simply found a website which gave them the information they wanted, and not anything gruesome) but mostly it seems to have worked, in terms of having children who are reasonably savvy and know what the boundaries are.

Osh had a sleepover for his 11th birthday. Three friends came round with their laptops and they had a mega Minecraft session. After they woke me up for the third time (I had no idea Minecraft could get so rowdy) I unplugged the router and took it to bed with me. That worked.

Mol

I have on occasion changed the router password and made the Gruesomes "buy" it off me (mostly with weeding or bathroom cleaning)

I think that you have a very limited time to bring up your children. When they get to 14 or so they start to push boundaries, it is normal and it is necessary. Sometimes they get burned, sometimes you let them get a little singed and sometimes you have to apply the plasters. Very occasionally you have to jump in with the fire extinguisher and stamp out flames.

The point is, as it is with bringing up children generally - and it is something that most parents are told but do have to learn by themselves - is that you do your bringing up and teaching when they are young. When they are teenagers you are standing on the edges hoping that they learned the lessons properly and exercise good judgement. That's a parent's job (and the teachers at school and society in general - we are ALL involved in the education of our young whether we want to or not. Even if it is by example - not crossing the road on a red man for eg)

Or something.

And those children go forth into the world. They might end up *anywhere,* such is the mobility of today's population. It may take a village to raise a child, but sometimes it amounts to a global village.

What about a digital village? (That's one for the old timers here...)

That's us!

I guess there are two kinds of possible harm from internet threats of violence - physical and psychological.

I use twitter and I blog for professional purposes, so if someone wanted to threaten me anonymously, they could do so. What would my thought process be if I received a threat of violence, anonymously, and out of the blue?

Well, after the shock, on one level I'd rationalise it away - assume that it's just some crank, or a practical joke, or mistaken identity, or whatever. I'd love to say that I'd be able to completely dismiss it - but the fact is that I wouldn't. Like it or not, it would play on my mind. It would affect how I see the world and how I see other people. In my head, I may know that the chances of actual harm coming to me are very small, but try telling that to the little paranoid voice who asks "what if?". And you can treble that if the threat includes friends/family.

If you're the kind of person whose got the kind of rhino-thick skin and the mental, logical rigour to process the threat and spit it out the other end, never to be thought of again, I take my hat off to you and recommend a career in politics. Or a test for psychopathy. Or both. But I suspect that you're in a minority, even among those in the public eye.

I'd imagine that receiving abuse via social media has a kind of car-crash "shouldn't look but can't help it" quality to it. You know you shouldn't read it and should just ignore it, but perhaps the fear/worry of what it might say might be worse/more damaging than what it actually does say. I'd imagine it's strangely compelling, and I think you'd have to be very mentally strong not to look. Stronger than me, certainly.

How might I respond to the hypothetical threat? One would be to shut down my twitter account and my blog which have been the vehicles for greatly enhancing my professional standing and network. While I've got no absolute moral or legal right to use social media and can freely choose not to (though I may have some legal rights under equalities legislation, it's much clearer that other people don't have the moral or legal right to abuse me on social media.

Yes, problematical - had one or two brushes with that sort of thing meself, in real life...

Perhaps a visit here might help?

A87723912