I want to browse the web without exposure to sexual/gory content. Period.
Big-tech platforms shield me from this by employing content moderators who must watch and hide explicit content. I value my privacy and want to avoid such platforms. I also find their practice unethical toward the employees.
But I don’t know what the ethical alternatives are?
For example, some highly questionable (and even repulsive/illegal) content appeared in duckduckgo search without me seeking it, with moderate/safe search enabled. I tested the same search terms in Google, and as expected, nothing dodgy appeared. I know it’s unlikely I’ll ever actually view such content without clicking, but I would rather it was filtered out entirely. I am now seeking duckduckgo alternatives.
I would also like to migrate from YouTube frontends to Peertube. However, I read it is full of NSFW content, and am therefore am not moving.
I know centralized moderation is at odds with freedom of expression and general libre philosophies. But the internet should also be a safe place, particularly for children.
Are there any tools I should know about? Or moderation methods? What is your perspective? And are there any books/podcasts which explore this tension between a free internet and a safe internet?
(edit: I retract saying “the internet should be a safe place”. I know that is an unrealistic ideal which will inevitably be too steep an infringement upon freedom. What I want to say, is that users should be able to filter out shock/sexual content from search queries, feeds, and suggestions, and I wonder what the options are, particularly in a FOSS environment.)
My initial thoughts go towards DNS filters, NextDNS for example has a filters you can enable for adult content, gambling, dating, etc. However I’m not sure if it would work at a search engine level, honestly I think it wouldn’t. What it would do is keep the sites from loading if you accidently clicked on them.
If google search works for you then startpage is judt google but frontended, same way ddg is just bing with a front end. Personally i highly recommend Brave search.
I tested both. I changed Mullvad VPN location to Thailand (where p hub is blocked) AND set DNS content blocker to block adult content. Nevertheless, p hub loaded videos without issue.
I’m not sure if NextDNS is better, but even if it is, I suspect similar content will still appear in search engine, reddit feed, telegram, peertube, etc. This is the bigger issue rather than blocking specific sites which can be quickly bypassed by turning off the blocker and/or using Tor.
Your DNS is likely not flushed. It should not have happened. Also, cookies and browser cache and other data.
I think you’re asking too much to be blocked. NextDNS can block a lot - did you give it a full honest try?
Here’s another reason I suggest NextDNS - there’s a way to set it up where the user cannot get past NextDNS filters. Check out NextDNS features and functionality in full.
Flushed DNS data and it still occurred. Using Mullvad browser so no cookies browser data.
I haven’t yet tried NextDNS. If I suggested I did and/or didn’t think it was good, it was by mistake.
But either way, I am aware there are many posts (elsewhere) on how to block adult content, and didn’t mean for mine to be another. Do please link info on NextDNS not permitting user to turn off filters though, as I can’t find it.
I am the same, but as stated in original post, would like to rely on FOSS only services (such as Peertube), which seems to come with the risk of no/poor NSFW (or even illegal content) filtering.
To return also to what I said about duckduckgo. Merely typing the word “vids” (simply to test what such a generic word produces) brought me links to illegal-themed content within three pages, and the safe-search option made little difference (except in image search). Not that I would ever seriously search such a term, but seeing what came up makes me think the internet cannot be private and safe for children, hell, even teenagers. And also, it makes me simply feel uncomfortable about deviating from big tech and their moderation resources.
I know I shouldn’t be expecting the internet to be safer than the real world, in the sense that there will be things I don’t wanna see in specific places. The point is to avoid those places. But 99% of people will say that I should use only Google search engine and YouTube for streaming if I want to avoid such places. My point is that I fear these people may be correct, and that wholly private browsing/video-streaming is like the Wild West.
So, I just searched Vids, with safe search set to the strictest option, on DDG, Startpage, Brave Search, Google, and Bing. DDG and Bing did bring up NSFW results within 2/3 pages and were nigh on identical as Bing is where DDG sources it’s search results from. Startpage and Google did not bring up any NSFW results within at least the first 5 pages, and were again, nigh on identical due to Startpage getting it’s results from Google. Brave Search did not return any NSFW results within at least the first 5 pages and has it’s own crawler so the results are fully independent. You can also filter Brave to use Google as a search front end as well. I’m not sure what the exact issue is here, Bing has been known to have worse results than other engines for a long time and DDG is using the inferior product for their results.
Can you give an example of what you are talking about.
My experience with duckduckgo specifically and the (modern, clear) internet broadly, has not mirrored yours. I don’t frequently incidentally or unintentionally run into illegal or even very explicit content accidentally. I’m wondering if we may have very different ideas of what is explicit or how sanitized the internet (or world) should be.
I’d appreciate knowing more about what videos on duckduckgo were “illegal themed” in your eyes?
The way to make the net safe for kids is to ONLY allow whitelisted sites.
For teenagers you start with browsing under 100% supervision and then gradually taper this down with occasional log-checking until they achieve sufficient media literacy to use the InterNet in an appropriate manner for their particular age.
This of course needs a relationship with your children based on mutual trust honesty and respect.
I honestly feel kinda bad for the kids of today’s generation of tech users. I was one of the ones bypassing filters at a young age and now my kids will have a much harder time doing the same things I did just because I have a better understanding of how to control devices and networks than my parents did.
I somehow didn’t know that Duckduckgo was based on Bing, and that Brave is independent. Maybe I got them mixed up, and identified the questionable duckduckgo results as being ‘what happens when you have a search engine detached from big tech’. of course, I now know I was wrong. Brave seems the best option, I now know.
The “vids” search query resulted in following I considered illegal themed. 1. a gore site 2. a p site whose name is slang for s assault at the beginning of extensive exploitation 3. a bing link to a nudist beach video which (very) weirdly had “C… S… A…” in the text below link.
Further pages linked picture repositories with search terms related to underage.
Maybe none of the above had content which was actually illegal, but it was advertised to be in that direction.
Seeing this made me worried, and reminded me of my concern about migrating to Peertube and other fully anonymous decentralized platforms. I’m curious about people’s experiences with such, and about the broader digital decentralization+moderation conversation
I tried it myself and DDG does seem to be allowing NSFW/strange links even on strict settings with the search term you used
From what i’m aware DDG curates these results from multiple sources, including their own crawler, but most notably from Bing as they both shared the same/similar results. So even a “Big Tech platform” like Microsoft’s Bing falters here, and DDG’s results are consequential for relying on it
That has never been the case even with Big Tech, no matter what we do online we’ll always be exposed to some degree of danger, the best thing we can do is be vigilant, and use the tools at our disposal (the suggestions made here, and others)
This is why it’s so important for parental supervision, i can’t stress this enough that our devices are powerful tools, not toys
mullvad browser has doh on to mullvad by default which will override ur systems dns for the browser, u should disable that if youre using mullvad vpn (DNS over HTTPS and DNS over TLS), or if ur using nextdns set it to the nextdns config ur using