School software flags and reports kids who use "LGBTQ+ keywords"

[Person Man]

This school ought to be ashamed of themselves. Content filtering designed to prevent access to pornography and viruses shouldn't be used to harass LGBT children, especially not ones with homophobic parents. This should be flatly illegal.

What should be illegal?  Monitoring student's activity on district-managed devices or disclosing a student's sexual orientation to his parents?  

I think saying schools shouldn’t be allowed to disclose students’ sexual orientation to parents without their consent, which could get them kicked out of the house or worse, ought not to be a controversial take.

Or at least not until the school can be reasonably certain that the disclosure will cause no harm. Parents have a right to raise their children, but not to abuse them.

[Associate Justice PiT]

This is why people shouldn't do personal stuff on school computers.

some kids have nothing else. I know some of them, and I lived in the richest school district in my county.

Kids aren't entitled to a computer?  and certainly not entitled to do whatever they like with one? 

Do you think kids are “entitled” to know what being gay is?

What does this question even mean?  I didn't have to Google what "gay" was and I still turned out that way, lol

Kids aren't entitled to use school-provided equipment or resources to access potentially inappropriate or dangerous content, or any other content the school doesn't sanction for that matter. The Internet is an adult space.  Tracking and monitoring what students do online empowers parents to make choices for what is and is not appropriate for their children   

Good for you. Some people are served by help from others.

What is with the redirecting towards “inappropriate or dangerous content” to justify censoring gay and lesbian topics? If it’s about porn, just censor “porn”.

     Content controls that basic might as well not exist at all. If schools want to control what children are searching for, they need to think hard about how people might try to access the forbidden content. Not everyone searching "lesbian" has questions about their own sexual orientation.

[Del Tachi]

This is why people shouldn't do personal stuff on school computers.

some kids have nothing else. I know some of them, and I lived in the richest school district in my county.

Kids aren't entitled to a computer?  and certainly not entitled to do whatever they like with one? 

Do you think kids are “entitled” to know what being gay is?

What does this question even mean?  I didn't have to Google what "gay" was and I still turned out that way, lol

Kids aren't entitled to use school-provided equipment or resources to access potentially inappropriate or dangerous content, or any other content the school doesn't sanction for that matter. The Internet is an adult space.  Tracking and monitoring what students do online empowers parents to make choices for what is and is not appropriate for their children   

Good for you. Some people are served by help from others.

Public schools should not be bypassing parents to facilitate minor students getting anonymous "help" from God knows who on the Internet.  If a kid wants to talk to his teacher or counselor, that's appropriate and a type of communication that can be protected from involuntary disclosure in many circumstances.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

This is why people shouldn't do personal stuff on school computers.

some kids have nothing else. I know some of them, and I lived in the richest school district in my county.

Kids aren't entitled to a computer?  and certainly not entitled to do whatever they like with one? 

Do you think kids are “entitled” to know what being gay is?

What does this question even mean?  I didn't have to Google what "gay" was and I still turned out that way, lol

Kids aren't entitled to use school-provided equipment or resources to access potentially inappropriate or dangerous content, or any other content the school doesn't sanction for that matter. The Internet is an adult space.  Tracking and monitoring what students do online empowers parents to make choices for what is and is not appropriate for their children   

Good for you. Some people are served by help from others.

Public schools should not be bypassing parents to facilitate minor students getting anonymous "help" from God knows who on the Internet.  If a kid wants to talk to his teacher or counselor, that's appropriate and a type of communication that can be protected from involuntary disclosure in many circumstances.

Public schools should not be outing kids to their parents.

This is why people shouldn't do personal stuff on school computers.

some kids have nothing else. I know some of them, and I lived in the richest school district in my county.

Kids aren't entitled to a computer?  and certainly not entitled to do whatever they like with one? 

Do you think kids are “entitled” to know what being gay is?

What does this question even mean?  I didn't have to Google what "gay" was and I still turned out that way, lol

Kids aren't entitled to use school-provided equipment or resources to access potentially inappropriate or dangerous content, or any other content the school doesn't sanction for that matter. The Internet is an adult space.  Tracking and monitoring what students do online empowers parents to make choices for what is and is not appropriate for their children   

Good for you. Some people are served by help from others.

What is with the redirecting towards “inappropriate or dangerous content” to justify censoring gay and lesbian topics? If it’s about porn, just censor “porn”.

     Content controls that basic might as well not exist at all. If schools want to control what children are searching for, they need to think hard about how people might try to access the forbidden content. Not everyone searching "lesbian" has questions about their own sexual orientation.

What if they do, though? What if they’re interested in issues affecting the lesbian community? What if they want to learn more about Sappho but forgot her name?

Anyway, good to know the blue avatars here think banning kids from googling “porn” on the school computer or restricting certain sites or whatever is so basic it might as well be nothing, but banning everything related to a massive community of which many of them are a part is A-OK.

[Associate Justice PiT]

This is why people shouldn't do personal stuff on school computers.

some kids have nothing else. I know some of them, and I lived in the richest school district in my county.

Kids aren't entitled to a computer?  and certainly not entitled to do whatever they like with one? 

Do you think kids are “entitled” to know what being gay is?

What does this question even mean?  I didn't have to Google what "gay" was and I still turned out that way, lol

Kids aren't entitled to use school-provided equipment or resources to access potentially inappropriate or dangerous content, or any other content the school doesn't sanction for that matter. The Internet is an adult space.  Tracking and monitoring what students do online empowers parents to make choices for what is and is not appropriate for their children   

Good for you. Some people are served by help from others.

What is with the redirecting towards “inappropriate or dangerous content” to justify censoring gay and lesbian topics? If it’s about porn, just censor “porn”.

     Content controls that basic might as well not exist at all. If schools want to control what children are searching for, they need to think hard about how people might try to access the forbidden content. Not everyone searching "lesbian" has questions about their own sexual orientation.

What if they do, though? What if they’re interested in issues affecting the lesbian community? What if they want to learn more about Sappho but forgot her name?

Anyway, good to know the blue avatars here think banning kids from googling “porn” on the school computer or restricting certain sites or whatever is so basic it might as well be nothing, but banning everything related to a massive community of which many of them are a part is A-OK.

     I think Del Tachi made a reasonable enough point that the school should be a resource for these children, where there can be a degree of quality control exercised as to the guidance they receive, as opposed to the internet, where they can easily happen upon strange and harmful content.

     Also, "banning everything" is quite the mischaracterization of what I said. My point was merely that the school has a rational interest in monitoring searches for what could likely lead to adult content. If it allows them to give children better advice than they would get from Instagram or TikTok, that is quite the plus.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

This is why people shouldn't do personal stuff on school computers.

some kids have nothing else. I know some of them, and I lived in the richest school district in my county.

Kids aren't entitled to a computer?  and certainly not entitled to do whatever they like with one? 

Do you think kids are “entitled” to know what being gay is?

What does this question even mean?  I didn't have to Google what "gay" was and I still turned out that way, lol

Kids aren't entitled to use school-provided equipment or resources to access potentially inappropriate or dangerous content, or any other content the school doesn't sanction for that matter. The Internet is an adult space.  Tracking and monitoring what students do online empowers parents to make choices for what is and is not appropriate for their children   

Good for you. Some people are served by help from others.

What is with the redirecting towards “inappropriate or dangerous content” to justify censoring gay and lesbian topics? If it’s about porn, just censor “porn”.

     Content controls that basic might as well not exist at all. If schools want to control what children are searching for, they need to think hard about how people might try to access the forbidden content. Not everyone searching "lesbian" has questions about their own sexual orientation.

What if they do, though? What if they’re interested in issues affecting the lesbian community? What if they want to learn more about Sappho but forgot her name?

Anyway, good to know the blue avatars here think banning kids from googling “porn” on the school computer or restricting certain sites or whatever is so basic it might as well be nothing, but banning everything related to a massive community of which many of them are a part is A-OK.

     I think Del Tachi made a reasonable enough point that the school should be a resource for these children, where there can be a degree of quality control exercised as to the guidance they receive, as opposed to the internet, where they can easily happen upon strange and harmful content.

     Also, "banning everything" is quite the mischaracterization of what I said. My point was merely that the school has a rational interest in monitoring searches for what could likely lead to adult content. If it allows them to give children better advice than they would get from Instagram or TikTok, that is quite the plus.

Is it a mischaracterization? It’s certainly not a mischaracterization of the school’s policy of flagging the word “gay” and telling kids’ parents about it. That’s obviously going to have a chilling effect at the very least.

The justifications that have been offered for this policy are pure hypotheticals and assumptions. It’s all “this could lead to X”. “Kids might be searching for Y”. “If it allows Z”. Meanwhile, kids being outed to their parents as a result of it is a fact.

[Associate Justice PiT]

This is why people shouldn't do personal stuff on school computers.

some kids have nothing else. I know some of them, and I lived in the richest school district in my county.

Kids aren't entitled to a computer?  and certainly not entitled to do whatever they like with one? 

Do you think kids are “entitled” to know what being gay is?

What does this question even mean?  I didn't have to Google what "gay" was and I still turned out that way, lol

Kids aren't entitled to use school-provided equipment or resources to access potentially inappropriate or dangerous content, or any other content the school doesn't sanction for that matter. The Internet is an adult space.  Tracking and monitoring what students do online empowers parents to make choices for what is and is not appropriate for their children   

Good for you. Some people are served by help from others.

What is with the redirecting towards “inappropriate or dangerous content” to justify censoring gay and lesbian topics? If it’s about porn, just censor “porn”.

     Content controls that basic might as well not exist at all. If schools want to control what children are searching for, they need to think hard about how people might try to access the forbidden content. Not everyone searching "lesbian" has questions about their own sexual orientation.

What if they do, though? What if they’re interested in issues affecting the lesbian community? What if they want to learn more about Sappho but forgot her name?

Anyway, good to know the blue avatars here think banning kids from googling “porn” on the school computer or restricting certain sites or whatever is so basic it might as well be nothing, but banning everything related to a massive community of which many of them are a part is A-OK.

     I think Del Tachi made a reasonable enough point that the school should be a resource for these children, where there can be a degree of quality control exercised as to the guidance they receive, as opposed to the internet, where they can easily happen upon strange and harmful content.

     Also, "banning everything" is quite the mischaracterization of what I said. My point was merely that the school has a rational interest in monitoring searches for what could likely lead to adult content. If it allows them to give children better advice than they would get from Instagram or TikTok, that is quite the plus.

Is it a mischaracterization? It’s certainly not a mischaracterization of the school’s policy of flagging the word “gay” and telling kids’ parents about it. That’s obviously going to have a chilling effect at the very least.

The justifications that have been offered for this policy are pure hypotheticals and assumptions. It’s all “this could lead to X”. “Kids might be searching for Y”. “If it allows Z”. Meanwhile, kids being outed to their parents as a result of it is a fact.

     It seems more likely that it was an isolated incident that could be corrected through training, and not a general policy to tell parents if their student searched "gay". The article linked to an article in a student newspaper, which includes this quote from staff on the matter:

Matlock’s safety team is the first to receive these alerts as they are working 24/7 in case of emergency. His team passes the information to the principal or assistant principal who decides which support personnel, such as a social worker, would be best to help the student. The safety team can also reach out to the emergency contact (usually parent or guardian) of the student in case of immediate danger. In rare situations where they are unable to get into contact with an emergency contact or reach the student somehow, they may get in touch with law enforcement.

     Based on this description of their policy, if followed adequately parents should not be contacted unless necessary for student safety.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I think a compromise involving blacklisting common porn terms (which does, yes, unfortunately include terms related to sexual orientation) but whitelisting non-pornographic informational sites like Wikipedia could be tenable. I just don't think that would satisfy a lot of the types of administrators and parents whose responsibility it is to put these controls in place.

[GP270watch]

 Outing a child who hasn't come to terms with their sexuality on their own time table is child abuse.

[Ferguson97]

Flagging searches for words like "gay" or "lesbian" for review is appropriate because these terms are inherently sexual. 

Sexual in the sense of being related to sex, yes, as are words and phrases like "marriage" and "reproductive system" and "Nevada". Using the word here in a way that implies it's also meant in the sense of explicit or pornographic is scurrilous, dishonest implication-mongering of the lowest order. And I think you know that.

The words "gay" and "lesbian" are two of the most commonly used terms in pornography searches

So are "teen" and "asian" and "stepmom" but those terms are not inherently sexual, and I doubt you'd have a problem with students googling those words.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

I think a compromise involving blacklisting common porn terms (which does, yes, unfortunately include terms related to sexual orientation) but whitelisting non-pornographic informational sites like Wikipedia could be tenable. I just don't think that would satisfy a lot of the types of administrators and parents whose responsibility it is to put these controls in place.

I don’t think it even has to include those. Again, people are just saying “we have to flag X term because it might lead to porn” - just blacklist the sites. I’ve never been one of those people who rushes to apply First Amendment doctrine to broader society (although frankly there might be some sort of claim here, especially from the student who got outed), but I think the school would do well to consider the overbreadth doctrine.

[Del Tachi]

This is why people shouldn't do personal stuff on school computers.

some kids have nothing else. I know some of them, and I lived in the richest school district in my county.

Kids aren't entitled to a computer?  and certainly not entitled to do whatever they like with one? 

Do you think kids are “entitled” to know what being gay is?

What does this question even mean?  I didn't have to Google what "gay" was and I still turned out that way, lol

Kids aren't entitled to use school-provided equipment or resources to access potentially inappropriate or dangerous content, or any other content the school doesn't sanction for that matter. The Internet is an adult space.  Tracking and monitoring what students do online empowers parents to make choices for what is and is not appropriate for their children   

Good for you. Some people are served by help from others.

Public schools should not be bypassing parents to facilitate minor students getting anonymous "help" from God knows who on the Internet.  If a kid wants to talk to his teacher or counselor, that's appropriate and a type of communication that can be protected from involuntary disclosure in many circumstances.

Public schools should not be outing kids to their parents.

Once again, none of the reporting linked to by OP establishes that the school "outed" a student to his parents.  Per the description of district policy posted by PiT, information is only released to parents when it's determined a student is in immediate danger.  I can think of multiple scenarios in which a school would be justified to release information under this policy that would have the effect of non-purposely suggesting or revealing a student's sexual orientation.  That isn't some callous, anti-queer "outing" however.

[DaleCooper]

The same parents that allow their children to watch Game of Thrones and play GTA V when they're under the age of 8 are very concerned about what their precious kiddos find on the internet. What a joke. Instead of keeping a list of bad words to monitor, just block access to things that look like porn sites and call it a day. That worked fine back in the day, though it still caught a lot of innocent websites in the crossfire, but it's better than this crap.

[CEO Mindset]

or you know, the kids shouldn't be spied on at all

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Flagging searches for words like "gay" or "lesbian" for review is appropriate because these terms are inherently sexual. 

Sexual in the sense of being related to sex, yes, as are words and phrases like "marriage" and "reproductive system" and "Nevada". Using the word here in a way that implies it's also meant in the sense of explicit or pornographic is scurrilous, dishonest implication-mongering of the lowest order. And I think you know that.

The words "gay" and "lesbian" are two of the most commonly used terms in pornography searches

So are "teen" and "asian" and "stepmom" but those terms are not inherently sexual, and I doubt you'd have a problem with students googling those words.

"Lesbian Asian Stepmom" has a very, very particular connotation that no reasonable person thinks the words have independently. I think I'm going to walk back my proposed compromise earlier on this page based on how obvious you've made the double standard by making this observation, so thank you.

[afleitch]

For balance, the software should flag any straight keywords less they be considered inherently sexual.