Wow, just had a proper look at OARS (Open Age Ratings Service) used in GNOME Software, elementary OS AppCenter, etc., and it’s problematic as hell.
Thank goodness they removed “homosexuality” from the rating (wtf?) but it still represents a very limited world-view.
e.g. “nudity likely to cause offense”
To whom, exactly?
“Intense: Explicit nudity showing nipples…”
Men, put your shirts back on!
Under language: profanity (“defined as blasphemous…language”)
Not a secular rating, then…
The pushback and attitude displayed here by the maintainer tells me OARS isn’t fit for purpose – and likely no centralised content rating system is.
Again, we can do better than to prepetuate the limited worldview of trillion-dollar US companies like Apple with “open” versions of their “moral” frameworks based on profit maximisation.
https://github.com/hughsie/oars/issues/35
https://github.com/hughsie/oars/issues/39
“As of 2020, various countries have laws which criminalise lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) people. In order for software and content to be distributed in those countries without breaking the law, and possible reprisal, it is necessary to be able to tag software and content which contains LGBT references, so that it can be hidden in those countries.”
Like, seriously, fuck you for ever writing this.
How the fuck does someone write something like this and think, yeah, this is fine?
@aral Quite a few Commonwealth countries have laws that make Homosexuality illegal.
I wonder how many of these countries are linked to what is being mentioned here.
As usual this is not even in the news.
Interesting paper on this on archive.
Ethical Exploration and the Role of Planetary Protection in Disrupting Colonial Practices
@zleap Interesting indeed. Of course, this applies only to other planets with any kind of life, or even intelligent lifeforms. @aral