"This post is G-Rated"

[s1018954 at aix2.uottawa.ca]

On Thu, 25 Jan 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:

> If the League of Usenet Ladies makes this request, I have no problems
> (though I'm almost certain to delete their request and do nothing one way
> or another about it). If the Islamic Students Association makes the same
> request, I also have no problems (and will also likely discard the
> request). These are non-governmental entities, merely requesting actions
> (and, of course, gettting about 2% compliance, or less,  with their
> requests).
Actually there's a pgp-based program that lets them do that with usenet 
posts. It is called NoCem ("No See 'Em") and is currently used to let users
avoid spam. With spam (or crud of your choice) being defined by those 
posters to alt.nocem.misc whom you trust the most. You can let canceller 
of your choice (anyone with pgp) censor your personal newsfeed.

Unfortunately, like all things unix or command line, it is not a 
no-brainer for Joe Sixpack (I couldn't manage to run it on this unix 
system, for example.) Of course any windows or mac hack could do the 
same trick. Try <http://www.cm.org> 

Bryce's proposal from last week for a cypherpunks-message cancellation 
list is similar. (Sorry, Bryce, I'd help out if I had the time.)

> (Note of course that the League of Usenet Ladies and the Islamic Students
> Association are very likely to have very different ideas about what the
> labels should reflect! Not to mention the several hundred other major
> special interest groups who will want their ideologies reflected in a
> ratings system.)

And the above system would let them do it. One could also personally 
assign a "weight" to each rater and have messages cancelled once a 
threshold was passed (this proposed in the faq, since I couldn't run it, I 
don't know if it currently does it).
  
Who says pgp's web of trust is obsolete? This is an actual application.
Grassroots tech wins again. (Of course this is just a souped-up 
killfile prog masquerading as a newserver, really. Simple solution.)