Rattle wrote:
In contrast, Secret B Chat lets girls chat with their keyboards -- just like a real chat room. But it limits the girl-talk to a white list of approved words. "If you happen to use a word that's not on our list (even if it's not a bad one), it will get blocked," the service cautioned girls at launch. "But don't worry -- we're always adding cool new words!"

Whats really sinister about this is that Barbie is getting children used to a world in which Internet censorship and electronic IDs are common place while these children are too young to think about it. My first impression of the online world involved a BBS where I made the rules. People who grew up with this kind of heavily controlled interaction, which later graduates into net-nannies and surveillance tools which inevitably give mom and dad access to our social network profile and emails... well perhaps they'll think nothing of warrantless government surveillance or government censorship of Internet conversations. It will be something that has been a part of their life from the very start. To them an Internet in which Barbie isnt cutting out the bad words will seem alien... Some sort of distopian nightmare fuelled by liberal ACLU sympathizers whose real goal must be to establish a national communist regime.

I can only hope instead that the experience of trying to carefully pick words that Barbie allows is so clunky and annoying that the girls are instead taught a lesson in how stupid and arbitrary authority can be. That by the time they're 16 they've figured out how to hack their way around the net nannys and they can't wait to reach the age of majority when no one will be able to foist that kind of crap on them anymore.

RE: Barbie Becomes an Authentication Device for Pre-Teen Friendship | Threat Level