Twitter, full of porn - what do you do?

[grant_girdwood]

I came across this interesting article from Channel 4 News - (One in every thousand tweets is porn - Channel 4 News) which really just confirms what we all know in that Twitter hosts a lot of porn, so it got me thinking, what do schools do?

 

I've come across schools that block/allow twitter completely, some allow access to a specific page and others try to apply social media controls such as read-only access.

 

I'm interested in what your approach to Twitter in Education is?

[Marci]

We go with whatever our legal department say based on their interpretation of Twitter's terms & conditions, which is: not for use by students below age of 15, therefore Post 16 only have access.

[unixman_again]

We allow access to the college twitter page, but we can't stop what the students do on their phones, so blocking it is a waste of time.

[pcstru]

Access for selected staff only. Edited February 18, 2015 by pcstru
Clarity

[JRowley]

We go with whatever our legal department say based on their interpretation of Twitter's terms & conditions, which is: not for use by students below age of 15, therefore Post 16 only have access.

 

Same as the above, for all social media.

[synaesthesia]

Social media, so obviously it's blocked for students. Enabled for staff. Common sense really, this certainly isn't new information.

[Sylv3r]

No access for our students aged 11 - 18, but staff have full access.

 

I must admit i've been a twitter user for around 3 years and yes, I have come across pornographic material generally as spam, but I'm not sure how much is floating around generally.

[JRowley]

No access for our students aged 11 - 18, but staff have full access.

 

I must admit i've been a twitter user for around 3 years and yes, I have come across pornographic material generally as spam, but I'm not sure how much is floating around generally.

 

The same for me, though I suppose it's one of those where you have to go looking for it, and if you do it's relatively easy to find. Much like the internet on the whole really these days.

[clareq]

Sixth form and staff have a quota of an hour a day for social media. The sixth form quota includes sites like youtube, staff have unrestricted access to youtube. KS3 and KS4 have no social media access.

[grant_girdwood]

Thanks for the feedback folks, certainly useful to see what your views are on this area and what you do

 

By no means was this intended to teach any of you to suck eggs as this certainly isn't new to most of us but I thought it would be best to share! Hopefully the channel 4 news article will be useful to back up some IT admins as to why this angle of filtering is taken with Twitter in particular.

 

The vast majority of Twitter users won't come across this type of adult content, however we all know that it is pretty easy to gain access to! It will continue as long as Twitter do not have any "community guidelines" on adult content being shared on Twitter.

 

Hopefully their approach will change or add some safe search style functionality where it can be enforced by filtering solutions

 

Cheers,

Grant

[JLambert97]

When I was at college we had full access to twitter (and pretty much everything in terms of social media besides Facebook) but at school we had no access to any social media. I remember the computers them selves were very heavily restricted too (Didn't stop my 14 year old self who knew next to zilch about computers figuring out how to play minecraft though)

 

I'm 17 almost 18 now and doing an apprenticeship. I go to a training centre for half a day a week. That used to be as open as when I was at college but it is now very heavily limited.

[corieltauvi]

I must be following the wrong people on Twitter as I've never seen anything even slightly fruity.

[HarryMonkey]

We have access for staff only.

[HarryMonkey]

I must be following the wrong people on Twitter as I've never seen anything even slightly fruity.

 

Simply typing the word porn into the search brings up a porn feed to follow, I'm sure the little cherubs would cotton on to this straight away if it wasn't blocked.

[elsiegee40]

Simply typing the word porn into the search brings up a porn feed to follow, I'm sure the little cherubs would cotton on to this straight away if it wasn't blocked.

 

But they never do that at home... why would they do it in school?

[HarryMonkey]

Aaah, yes of course. How silly of me ;-)

[localzuk]

We're a middle school with kids aged 8-13, we block it entirely (along with all other social media). This applies to everyone, staff and pupils alike, but then we have a single "if its blocked, it should be blocked site-wide" policy based on the concept that a teacher could accidentally (or purposefully) show something inappropriate to kids. We don't want staff getting sacked over such things.

[jaminben]

Twitter's terms & conditions, which is: not for use by students below age of 15, therefore Post 16 only have access.

 

@Marci We allow Twitter for all our students (11-18) much to my dismay... do you have a link to where it states this in Twitters T&C's so I can present a case to block it? I've looked and can't find anything.

 

Thanks

[grant_girdwood]

Hey @jaminben

 

They've moved it over to their privacy page, seems to be 13+ - https://twitter.com/privacy?lang=en

 

Our Policy Towards Children

Our Services are not directed to persons under 13. If you become aware that your child has provided us with personal information without your consent, please contact us here. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we become aware that a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, we take steps to remove such information and terminate the child's account. You can find additional resources for parents and teens here.

[jaminben]

Ok, Thanks for that... every little helps

[rdk]

We're a middle school with kids aged 8-13, we block it entirely (along with all other social media). This applies to everyone, staff and pupils alike, but then we have a single "if its blocked, it should be blocked site-wide" policy based on the concept that a teacher could accidentally (or purposefully) show something inappropriate to kids. We don't want staff getting sacked over such things.

 

I'm surprised your school lets teachers talk to kids - you never know what they might say.