Stop Hapara
andrew williams 0

Stop Hapara

187 people have signed this petition. Add your name now!
andrew williams 0 Comments
187 people have signed. Add your voice!
19%
Maxine K. signed just now
Adam B. signed just now

Hapara has been stirring up unrest among students for a while now, but only when it came to my school did I realize just how bad it was. Hapara can be used for good, yes, and teachers can be responsible, yes, but something about the situation leaves me nervous. My school already had Securly, which is mostly the same as Hapara, but the only differences were that Hapara allows teachers to actively meddle with students' screens, and that Hapara has an overproductive auto-blocking system. Securly could already block websites and track search history, but it was kinder in that if you wanted something unblocked, you could get it unblocked even if you were outside of school. Hapara's "reclassification tab" doesn't do anything. Even if you leave a comment, I mean, who are we kidding? No one reads those. And if you try and get a teacher to unblock it? They time it so that you can get things unblocked during class, when the teachers have you busy and you don't have time to get that site unblocked, and once you're out of school and you do have time to unblock that site, your teachers are offline and you can't, and thus it stays blocked forever. I think the main reason why the Hapara Issue doesn't get much attention is because a lot of students just want it gone for games. Now maybe I'm the exception here, but I think most of us don't actually want it gone for games. We just say that because we can't put into words what's really wrong about Hapara. But I think I can try, although I probably won't get it perfectly right. Hapara has too much power, and teachers can - and some will - abuse it. But it's this deeper sense of injustice that really gets me about it. Teachers shouldn't be able to affect your life and choices outside of school in this way. In school they can encourage you to do this or that, and if they do you probably should, but outside of school they shouldn't be able to just say "Nope, you can't listen to that song. And because all of your teachers are offline and it's the weekend, you can't do a thing about it". (True story; the weekend after Hapara came to my school, they blocked my favorite song for being "games". Is coolmathgames blocked? Nope). I totally get blocking a website that's actually dangerous, like a phishing website or a website that gives you viruses, that's fine. But they shouldn't be able to block other stuff. My parents already limit my screen time. I don't need a teacher telling me what to do outside of school, too. Teachers' job is to teach, and if Hapara helps in the classroom, then that's fine. But outside the classroom, the restrictions shouldn't be as severe. Kids aren't going to become criminals because they played a game in study hall. Many of my teachers are great, and they regularly encourage us to have fun outside of school. Teachers are not the issue. It's Hapara itself. I read an article on the Hapara Issue, and one of the adults - not kids - who was interviewed said that Hapara didn't work outside of school hours. Yeah right. Explain how my scratch project (where I was coding a game - don't tell me that's not educational, even though it was a game) got blocked at 5:00 PM on a Saturday! Hapara is the problem. Hapara is what's doing this. And guess what - I bet that my teachers wouldn't block any of the sites that Hapara has blocked. And the most disturbing thing: under the reclassification tab, there's an option to reclassify - not unblock - a website as "Educational". The fact that Hapara has the capacity to block a website for being educational shows that Hapara is not inherently good. The more the Hapara virus spreads, the more opportunity there is for censorship. Hapara markets itself as being "easy for teachers to use", but their whole argument is flawed. A one-sided group of like-minded adults shouldn't be able to block a website with a single click without being able to hear the other side of the argument first. Many of the sites that have been blocked - in my experience - it wouldn't even occur to me that the site could or should be blocked. As such, I couldn't prepare an argument ahead of time to defend myself, and by the time that I even knew it was blocked, I had no chance. Hapara shouldn't be able to do that. Even teachers shouldn't be able to do that. Take the youtube video titled "Colbreakz - 40.000", a video that was recently blocked. Hapara claims they're "an AI-powered" extension that "unlike other monitors, Hapara understands context". Totally. Any human with reason can see that that video was a song, following the format "song author - song title". But hapara blocked it anyway, without giving me a chance to explain. Hapara is wrong, and it shouldn't be allowed. The whole premise of their marketing is inherently flawed and goes against the US constitution; they can use Hapara to blacklist a site so that even teachers can't unblock it, stifling our freedom of speech and press (especially if a student doesn't have their own home computer). Hapara has too much power. One thing I haven't talked about is the blacklist. Hapara can blacklist a site, and it will be impossible to unblock, even by teachers. They've used this to great effect on the site "Hapara Horror Stories", an anti-hapara site, showing the beginnings of corruption in the ranks of hapara.

TL;DR:

-the premise of Hapara's marketing is flawed. They pride themselves on being able to block a website before the students have a chance to protest. That's not protecting students, that's censorship.

-Hapara says that their AI understands context, but it doesn't, or it does, but for the wrong reason. Say you're listening to a song on Youtube, and then, for some reason, it gets blocked, and you realize one of the videos that popped up in your feed, that you had no intention of clicking on, said "minecraft". And now you can't listen to that song.

-under the reclassification tab, it's possible to reclassify - not unblock - a site as "Educational". This shows that Hapara isn't inherently good; it has the capacity to block a site for being a good site.

-blocking a site for being educational is just the start. Firsthand experience: hapara blocks anti-hapara sites to shut down student protest

-students say that they want hapara gone to play games, but this is just an easy reason that teachers will believe. it's easier to express then the deep sense of injustice that's so hard to put into words. The problem is that teachers believe that's the real reason. I think I speak for most of us when I say it's not.

-Hapara takes advantage of adults' bias against kids. "Oh, they're just kids, they don't know." We do know.

-Hapara times when a site can be unblocked (during school) for when you're busy with schoolwork. Once you get out of school and do have time to try and get a site unblocked, too bad. Your teachers are all offline

-Teachers aren't the issue, it's the software that they use

Share for Success

Comment

187

Signatures