After Reading the article ‘Filtering content is often done with good intent, but filtering can also create equity and privacy issues.’, by Chris Gilliard and Hugh Culik. The filtering content is basically an algorithm that can determine and block certain information from the searching result online or from the website. I have aware that the danger and harm of Internet filtering and filtering contents. The primary purpose of filtering content is to protect and stop people from browsing sensitive contents on the internet, such as underage, in a company or stop students to browsing sensitive content on campus to avoid the spread of sensitive content such as porn, violence, and so on, which will be harming the metal health for an individual for certain cases, the company could be suit from sex harassment for having sensitive content being browsed in a company. This is why certain people believe that the filtering content is quite important in some environments like a company, school or in public. But on the other hand, the disadvantages of the filtering content is also very obvious.

When the algorithm detected some content they are told to screen, that’s where the alarm and redlining showed up, meant to prevent such occasion by blocking and filter information that students or underage could have access. But it could also cause some misunderstanding or misleading for students or underage during their searches, just like the example have given in the article, when the college student search for revenge porn, nothing relevant have showed up on the searching engine, that might mislead the student to think that this concept might never actually exist, which in some occasions it might be critical. This reminds me a case that happens in China, in China teenager don’t get a chance to receive any education regarding sex and gender roles from parents or teachers, since this content is quiet sensitive so Chinese adults decide to bury and filter all those content or related conversations, which cause a fairly high rate of abortion and most of teenagers in China don’t know how to have a healthy and safe sex, which might cause a lot of disease.  So I don’t think avoiding and escaping is the most appropriate why to solve any problem, instead, the proper way to solve this puzzle is required appropriate guidance by teachers, parents or social workers, instead of hiding and avoiding, we should just put it on the table, lay out the pros and cons and done some deep analysis for teenagers and student, which a proper guidance, we let them decide what they should do and what they should not.

 

Reference:

Gilliard, C. (2019, November 06). Digital Redlining, Access, and Privacy. Retrieved July 19, 2020, from https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/digital-redlining-access-and-privacy