All this talk of ethics is wonderfully, thrilling, fascinating, but a bit off the point. The attempts made at regulating online sources thus far have been made by a misinformed Congress and reacted to by a sensitive online community. With any new media, be it the printing press, the television, or the computer, comes a new way of presenting information to the public.
Information is a powerful tool, indeed.
The company has drawn business by offering options to help parents censor what their kids see online for almost four years now. This feature has been very successful, helping AOL stock soar and overcoming severe access problems in the mid-nineties. Still, in an effort to monitor services more closely, AOL prevented users from speaking Spanish in a forum - a bulletin board like area where subscribers may publicly post messages or reply to others. Since AOL had few volunteers who could speak Spanish and monitor the boards, they simply deleted any message containing Spanish. AOL reversed this decision about a week later and Spanish is now allowed in forums.