The Unfiltered Truth: Porn is Popular, and Internet Content Filters Suck at Their Job

by Coleen Singer at Sssh.com

The UK media is alight with reports that upwards of 96% of consumers there are not opting to use the porn filters offered by their ISPs. While most of these reports conclude (correctly) that this statistic reflects porn’s popularity, that popularity is just one part of the story. The whole story includes something that critics of online content filtration have consistently warned about over the years: over-inclusiveness.

I have no doubt that the primary reason that many UK customers are not using the filters is that they want to watch porn – or at least to leave that option open to be explored without having to make a rather awkward call to their ISP’s customer service department, should the desire to take in a little online smut ever strike them. The questionable efficacy of online content filters should not be ignored as a factor, however, especially when you consider the assertion made by the content filtration watchdog group Blocked that nearly 20% of the web’s non-porn sites are getting snared by these filters.

I don’t care how much of a concerned parent you might be, if you hear that almost 20% of the Internet is going to be inaccessible to you, regardless of whether that portion of the net is displaying any porn at all, that’s a powerful disincentive to using these filters. The Internet is supposed to represent the free exchange of ideas, after all, a democratization and liberation of publishing, a platform that takes every individual’s right and ability to be heard publicly to a level never before seen in human history.

If it suits you, slapping a filter up in front of the free marketplace of ideas is all well and good, I suppose, provided that it does its job right – which filters probably never will. In defense of their makers, filters probably never will be able to do so, either.

I know that many technologists would dispute this point, but until a technology comes along that proves me wrong, I’m going to stick to it: Identifying the actual, true nature of content and expressive material is something that only human beings can do – and we don’t even do it particularly well, much of the time. 

Remember what Justice Potter Stewart once said about not being able to define “hardcore pornography,” but knowing it when he saw it? Therein lies the dilemma for a content filter: it doesn’t have the ability to make nuanced judgments, or to acknowledge the difference between sexually-explicit and pornographic. It has no appreciation for so-called ‘gray areas’ – and increasingly, the Internet is one big gray area.

The bottom line is this: If you say you want “access to the Internet,” what you’re saying is that you want access to an enormous set of ideas, images and concepts that cover just about everything. If what you really want is access to everything except ideas that make you uncomfortable, offended and/or angry, then what you want isn’t the Internet; you want the Reader’s Digest version of the Internet.

I have no problem with people limiting the scope of their own web explorations, and – in theory – no issue with the idea of opt-in content filters. If seeing 80% of the Big Picture is your idea of a good time, proceed accordingly. Just don’t come crying to me when the filters don’t work, or turn around and push the conclusion that the only answer to imperfect filtration is to step up proactive censorship of things you don’t like in order to prevent them from being displayed online in the first place.

On that point, I’ll let Justice Stewart have the final word, in the form of a quote that is far less frequently cited than his “I know it when I see it” line, but far more instructive in terms of what makes for good policy in modern, Western democracies: “Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.”

Amen, Potter…. a-fucking-men.

About Coleen Singer:
Coleen Singer is a writer, photographer, film editor and all-around geeky gal at Sssh.com, where she often waxes eloquent about sex, porn, sex toys, censorship, the literary and pandering evils of Fifty Shades of Grey and other topics not likely to be found on the Pulitzer Prize shortlist. She is also the editor and curator of EroticScribes.com. When she is not doing all of the above, Singer is an amateur stock-car racer and enjoys modifying vintage 1970s cars for the racetrack. Oh, she also likes porn.

Visit Coleen at Sssh.com for more sex news, commentary and hot entertainment for women and couples!