GoGuardian and similar "safety" systems don't work. In many cases, they pose much more of a risk to students than the websites they are designed to block.
Sign the petitionA new site can be spun up in five minutes or less by following a simple tutorial. Trying to black them all turns into a constant headache for IT that can be used doing much more productive things. GoGuardian uses AI to try to catch sites in advance, but it fails often and the system causes (anonymized) student data to be used to train their models. Automated alerts can also crowd email inboxes due to the high number of false positives. The EFF has created a quiz to see if people can guess what caused sites to get flagged, showing truly how bad it is.
Links in the latest Gender and Sexuality Alliance email are blocked.
Can be monitored by parents through the GoGuardian parent app.
Have a school computer as their only device, especially those in families with lower incomes.
Do not share thoughts or ideas because they know what they do online may be monitored.
Often exists for requesting that a site be unblocked anonymously. Students may have to out themselves to teachers and/or IT staff.
At schools where montioring occurs know that a queer student has been outed by it. That number rises to 29% among LGBTQIA+ students.
73% of students have concern about monitoring in their schools. According to the Center for Democracy and Technology, "Black and Hispanic students reported being far more likely than white students to get into trouble because of online monitoring". Students with disabilities are also more likely to be concerned about monitoring than those who do not. False flags from these systems can also lead to police being sent to houses for simple misinterpretations. These systems also aren't cheap for taxpayers, as they can cost up to $60,000 per year. GoGuardian was purchased by the private equity firm Sumeru Equity Partners in 2018. To try to get districts to pay these prices, companies use many misleading statistics and claims in their marketing. The ACLU says that "for the EdTech Surveillance industry, 'an educated consumer is its worst customer.'"
"The [student surveillance technology] algorithms used by schools represent little more than bias in a box."
- Evan Enzer and Sarah Roth
From elected representatives to journalists to privacy advocates, it's hard to find an article from any mainstream source that is for student montioring.
