I'm all for individual liberties, and for being involved parents and teaching your kids how to think. But I also think people didn't read the article, or they're just looking for something to whine about today (tomorrow, something else).
The feature appears to be an option. Intelligent parents who want to guide their kids hands-on can opt not to use it. Parents who want to have some control, which they legally are in the right to have until the child is 18, can use it to mitigate abuse of the tools that they gave their child.
I don't get to make that decision for other parents, but it would be good to have the option for the parents to decide themselves if and how to implement it.
Another consideration is, if the filter is a two-way thing... imagine your child isn't a filthmouth like the douchebag teenagers sitting behind me last week at a screening where every third word out of their mouth was "*****" or "*****"... Now imagine some stranger accidentally OR intentionally texts them something very dirty or malicious. At least if a parent has an option to filter out that kind of stuff, there are some scenarios that don't revolve around what the child is initating and with whom.
I've had lengthy conversations with some parents who believe that government should be involved and censor across the board, but I believe that government censorship is abhorrent. However, this is not government censorship. No one's going to the FCC and telling us to police what EVERYONE can and can't do just to "shield" a specific class of people from things they don't want to see or hear.
This is entirely different, and it leaves the choice to the parent. And I like that option. It benefits me, even though I'm not a parent. How? Then I don't have to listen to people bitching about how the government should censor everything just because they don't have better resources at home with which to monitor their kids' activities and enforce their rules without affecting what I do in my house.
