Schools are censoring websites for suicide prevention, sex ed, and even NASA – By Tara García Mathewson (The Markup) / April 13, 2024
Records from across the country show just how much of the internet is blocked by school web filters, including LGBTQ+, suicide prevention and Planned Parenthood sites. Even NASA was blocked.
This article was co-published with The Markup, a nonprofit, investigative newsroom that challenges technology to serve the public good.
A middle school student in Missouri had trouble collecting images of people’s eyes for an art project. A high school junior couldn’t read analyses of the Greek classic “The Odyssey” for her language arts class. An eighth grader was blocked repeatedly while researching trans rights.
All of these students saw the same message in their web browsers as they tried to complete their work: “The site you have requested has been blocked because it does not comply with the filtering requirements as described by the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) or Rockwood School District.”
CIPA, a federal law passed in 2000, requires schools seeking subsidized internet access to keep students from seeing obscene or harmful images online — essentially porn.
