Internet content filtering using isotonic separation on content category ratings

Abstract

The World Wide Web has enabled anybody with a low cost Internet connection to access vast information repositories. Some of these repositories contain information (e.g., hate speech and pornography) that is considered objectionable, especially for children to view. Several efforts---legal and technical---are underway to protect children and the generic public from accessing this type of content. We propose a technical approach utilizing a recently proposed technique called isotonic separation for filtering with content metadata if they satisfy monotone conditions. We illustrate this approach using a category rating method of PICS. In essence, we formulate the Internet content filtering problem as a classification problem on content metadata and report on experiments we conducted with the isotonic separation technique.