Yakov Shafranovich wrote:
Within a consent framework, the individual administrator
or developer would choose which sources of information to rely on.
It should be recognized that if someone other than the actual
recipient of mail is making the decisions about how mail is to be
filtered, then there exists a possibility for inappropriate filtering of
messages (or censorship). Thus, I'm somewhat concerned when you suggest
it is "admistrator or developer" who would choose what "sources of
information" to rely on. I believe the individual should always be
provided a means to override or block any such third party decisions
about what they should be seeing.
A classic example of adminstrators filtering too many messages
by "accident" and/or due to their lack of understanding the context in
which messages were exchanged was Prodigy's decision (back in the late
80's) that people couldn't use "bad words" in discussion forums. The
result was that you weren't able to use the word "bitch" in a forum that
discussed breeding dogs... Prodigy had incorrectly determined that all
uses of the word "bitch" were inappropriate. The individuals who were
discussing dog breeding would not have made this decision.
Merely giving choice to users doesn't actually solve the
problem. I can imagine, for instance, a religious, political or business
leader who insists that all of his followers/employees and their
families must use a particular "rating service" in order to protect them
from "inappropriate" messages. This would be a case where external
pressures are put to bear to effectively remove the individual's choice
by means of forcing them to "choose" according to the dictates of a
third party.
Yes, these are social issues -- not technical ones. However, we
should be aware of the social impact of the technologies that we
advocate or evaluate.
bob wyman
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