Senator Legarda is only beginning to understand that, while offline media audiences rely on governments and media outlets for filters, online media audiences have infinite filtering capabilities at their individual disposal. While offline media is pre-filtered, online media is post-filtered. Chief among these post-filtering tools are search engines like Google, and Googler Aileen Apolo works very hard to educate Filipinos on how to empower themselves with these tools.

Post-filtering tools aren’t limited to search engines. Search whittles the Internet down to what you want to see when you want to see it, while content filtering software whittles the Internet down to what you want your kids to see when you want them to see it. Computer-owning parents can install free filtering software on their home networks. Internet cafes can voluntarily install such filtering and advertise themselves as family-friendly, so parents without computers can bring their kids there for homework. Cellular phone service providers can include such filtering in wireless Internet services on their kid-friendly brands. Game publisher Level Up already lets parents control their kids’ gaming time. The infinite choice of the Internet extends to infinite choice in filtering the Internet. The same can’t be said for noontime shows and highway billboards.

While media education is not very effective for offline media, it is incredibly effective for online media, simply because online media viewers have post-filtering tools offline media viewers do not. I’ll make sure to remind Senator Legarda of that fact next time I see her.

Could you talk to your friend Loren and make some sense out of her? I could go to jail for her stunt priming herself in the next election.

Being a PICS official, you should make a stand against this and her move to police the internet. This is censorship at its best.

And wow, that has to be one of the most unflattering photos of me ever. o_O