hughsie
Rating whether an app allows access to unfiltered web content
Some countries ask for web filters to be available. This could be indicated by some sort of freedesktop standardized setting for user accounts, or similar.
If something like a "please web filter for my child" account setting is ever implemented, it might be useful to add a rating that indicates "this app allows access to web pages and doesn't respect or implement any web filters if requested". This would allow some mechanism where something like GNOME Software could take this into account and for example not list the app.
I think we'd need to be a lot more precise -- e.g. would the app be allowed to override, or override with a parental PIN for example? Also, where would the web filters be configured?
would the app be allowed to override
I think the answer to that should be no, the setting should be changed for that in whatever settings app sets this env var. That's also where an override would be handled.
As for the filters, I wonder if any of the orgs that lobby for child protection could be incentivized to help make an open-source filter that somehow strikes an acceptable balance. I've noticed there are only some various commercial options that require using closed-source software, which doesn't seem great for something that potentially sees all web traffic. But clearly there's a demand from this, given so many states globally try to solve this misguidedly on the server side with horrible laws that ruin the web as a whole.
I do think we have to be pragmatic; if there exists no way of managing a filter on the desktop -- we can't very well ask apps to report if they respect the filter. So, I agree with you it's needed, but I think a lot more work has to be done before we can ask apps to include an extra OARS attribute.
This seems to be at least related to #29; I think any solution would probably cover both issues?
I do think we have to be pragmatic; if there exists no way of managing a filter on the desktop -- we can't very well ask apps to report if they respect the filter. So, I agree with you it's needed, but I think a lot more work has to be done before we can ask apps to include an extra OARS attribute.
We are close to having local web filtering support for parental controls in GNOME via malcontent. The backend (an NSS module and filter list daemon) has been written, it just needs a frontend, and work is planned on that.
