Out of 21,755 people that responded to the survey, an overwhelming majority said they didn't want Senator Conroy's internet filter.
Early results from broadband information site Whirlpool’s annual survey have found that 91.8 percent of respondents do not support the idea of mandatory internet filtering, with most believing the government should focus on educating parents and children instead.
In total, some 21,755 people responded to the survey, which is held each year and is seen as a key indicator to the opinions and internet usage patterns of technically proficient Australians and early technology adopters. The full results of the survey, which covers a range of other issues such as hardware usage and experiences with ISPs, are expected to be published soon. Delimiter has gained early access to the filter section of the survey only.
The 91.8 percent figure has risen since the last survey in early 2009, which showed that 88.9 percent of the 19,763 respondents at that stage would opt out of a filter if given the option.
This year’s result echoes similar polls conducted last year by the Sydney Morning Herald and ZDNet.com.au. 96 percent of the 24,378 respondents to an online SMH poll stated they believed the filtering plan was not a good idea and impinged on their freedom, while 96.6 percent of the 1746 respondents in the ZDNet.com.au survey stated the government was completely wrong on the policy.
However, a survey recently commissioned by the ABC’s Hungry Beast program appeared to show that 80 percent of respondents supported the filter, prompting strong discussion online about the poll.
Whirlpool’s survey this year showed that only 3.2 percent of respondents believed the Government should focus on mandatory internet filtering as an online safety technique.
Instead, 81.8 percent and 63.9 percent believed the Government should focus on respectively educating parents and children, 43.7 percent on law enforcement, 42.1 percent on desktop filter software and 33.5 percent on subsidising ISP-level opt-in filters.
Concerns remain
Whirlpool also queried respondents on what negative and positive results might come from the filtering initiative. The results:
- 90 percent believed the filter might overblock/restrict access to legitimate information
- 86.6 percent believed it may give parents a false sense of security
- 82.5 believed the system could be abused by future governments
- 78 percent believed it may reduce internet performance
- 67.4 percent believed it might reduce internet performance
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And 53.6 percent believed it might make the internet less reliable
In terms of positive results, only 32.2 percent and 40 percent of respondents to the Whirlpool survey believed the filter would respectively protect children from harm and restrict access to child pornography. 23.1 percent believed it would restrict access to other “criminal material”, while 9.3 percent believed it would “protect me from visiting inappropriate sites”. 8.6 percent believed it would reduce crime in general.
The internet filtering issue also appeared set to change voting patterns at the next Federal election, with 44 percent of respondents stating the issue would be a “key factor” in their voting decision, and 39.4 percent stating the issue could affect their vote, but not at the expense of other issues. 14.2 percent stated it would not affect their vote, while the remainder, 2.4 percent, were not eligible to vote.
Demographics
Criticism of Whirlpool survey results in the past has focused on the idea that the site’s user base is slanted towards the technically proficient. And there is a demonstratable slant in that direction — the most popular careers by far listed by respondents were in the IT sector — either as managers or IT admins, developers, or support officers.
Overall, 32.5 percent of respondents to Whirlpool’s survey listed their role as being IT staff of some sort, with a further 3.2 percent working in the telecommunications sector. However, virtually ever other sector was also represented in the survey’s demographics, with popular choices being government (4.7 percent), engineering/oil/mining (4.7 percent) and healthcare/medical (2.7 percent).
The age of the respondents reflected a broad spread among the ages below 50, although respondents aged 17 or younger were excluded from participating. The rest responded as follows:
- 18 to 21 years of age: 11.4 percent
- 22 to 25 years of age: 16.6 percent
- 26 to 30 years of age: 18.2 percent
- 31 to 40 years of age: 24.7 percent
- 41 to 50 years of age: 13.9 percent
- 51 or older years of age: 15.2 percent
33.8 percent listed their technical proficiency as “guru”, with a further 38.3 percent and 23.5 percent saying they were respectively a “power use” or “confident” with technology. Only 4.1 percent described their technical proficiency level as “still learning” and just 0.3 percent (only 70 people) said they were a beginner.
Delimiter