Online safety: it's very complicated

Online safety 28jul22. Ov1

Work in progress!

The UK government has been struggling with this concept for some time now, and continues to struggle with the original draft bill being parked amidst the shambles and aftermath of partygate.

The support for responisible freedom of speech and expression of opinion ought to be a fundamental objective and function of this awkwardly conceived and evolved legislation.

The definition of responsible is one of several crucial keys  The right to offend and be offended is necessary and fundamental. The range of language that people consider to be normal, necessary and acceptable is almost infinite. Suggesting to an infuriated individual that their choice of profanity is a reflection of impaired intellectual capability and a limited ability to express themselves within in the constraints of the mores of the the relevant conventions of polite society, is likely to result in a punch in the face in the real world, and an explosion of further profanity online.

The question of the measurement of the scale of the degree of offence ranges from delicate woke snowflake, to hardened unshockable adult; and crashes into the variations of the many ways that different societies invoke and involve traditions that maybe be thousands of years deep in their complexity and nuance.

Even the very fundamental protection of children by shielding them from exploitation by those who are not guided by the child's best interests, is complicated by the suggestion that kids are part of the enlightened new world of "fluid gender politics" that appears to be the ultimate expression of the "free love" revolution from the 60s, that was the ultimate antithesis of a Victorian morality that once covered up piano legs for reasons of modesty.

Many will regard this a perversion traditional adult responsibility to shield children from those areas of exploitative social interaction that are accessed through the traditional rites of passage.

Identifying behaviour that is offensive, lewd, gratuitous requires an understanding of continuously viable context. It is not simple in an industry controlled by sociopath asperger-limited geeks, that is desperate to reduce all interaction to rule-based procedures to remove the costly and potentially inconsistent human element.

But how to evaluate such a nearly impossibly ambitious scheme? Devising the full panaply of test cases and scenarios is a life's work covering experience of the entire human condition as it is manifested in hundreds of societies, each evolved with its own set of moral (religious) references and datums derived from thousands of years of experience and adjustment. Phew ...

Yes, it is impossible. The history of online has been defined by "special interest groups" (sigs) that exploited the opportunity to find others of a similar outlook and disposition to share and exchange experiences.

And that is as innocent and as deeply controversial as it sounds. Humanity has been fascinated by and absorbed by all aspects of sexuality since the dawn of civilization, has a trip around the museums of any ancient society will reveal. 

The issue is where robust and healthy interests become "pervy" and uncomfortable, and here, the age difference between the participants has generally been regarded as a key factor, with the age of consent being the traditional low tide mark.

Protection of the innocent from exploitation is an essential function of any civilized society ... without exception? Definitions of innocent? How does this vary with context?

A recent innovation is the world of online gaming, which has introduced a range of risks that were previously unimagined. It is in the nature of gaming and entertainment that the discovery of these risks may well be deeply buried within complex gameplay, adding considerably to the challenges of any attempted regulation.

Anyone who has been active online for any length of time will have experienced the unnerving moment when they realise that Google knows as much about them as a mother does. The result of those innocent browser cookies continuously gathering personal information and then becoming part of an ever-expanding profile, is impossible to eradicate or even control to any meaningful extent.

The only practical way through the process of tidying up online behaviour and interaction is to start simple and obvious. Securely identify all participants involved! Which then creates its own set of problems, including the opportunity for the biggest problem of them all: the infinite memory of the internet. Anything recorded online from the earliest age will be attached to the identity and follow the "perpetrator" from logon to logoff.

The option for users to exclude interaction with any other user they want to "ban" is a basic protection against stalking and general unpleasantness, for want of a better description of hateful and/or bullying behaviour.

Attempts to regulate the unintended consequences of the exploitation of online identify with legislation, such as GDPR have had mixed success. They have largely tended to suggest and then prove that the only safe way of dealing with personal data manipulation online, is to completely detach it from all possible identification traceable to the individual owner. Various methods of proxy identification have been proposed but new acceptable global standards have yet to emerge.

There is no safe compromise. Otherwise, it will be exploited by whoever is able to gather and process it - be it state spying institutions - lawful or clandestine - or commercial marketing companies looking to sell potential customers to advertisers - who want to sell anything from consumer goods to political objectives via the internet's spectrum of "personal services", that were defined by those original special interest groups back at the dawn of online.

This is a work in progress