Rating category for “is (something like) a web browser”

[wjt]

https://github.com/flathub/flathub/issues/1081#issuecomment-519594124 raised a question about what ratings are sensible for browser-like apps:

FeedReader itself has no advertising or adult content, but you could easily subscribe to gambling, porn and ad-heavy RSS feeds. I'm asking because I can find a generator but I can't actually find a spec for what the OARS options are.

I think it would be a bad idea to rate browser-like apps as "extreme" in all current content categories – the app itself doesn't ship offensive content – but I do think “can access arbitrary web content” is a meaningful piece of information. The only other app store I have at my fingertips – Google Play Store – has something like this. Feedly is an RSS reader. It is rated PEGI 3 (which seems correct) but there is an additional section:

Interactive Elements Users Interact, Unrestricted Internet

"Users Interact" is analogous to social-chat / social-audio I think; perhaps OARS 1.2 could grow social-internet, where extreme means "can access arbitrary internet stuff"?

[hughsie]

Isn't a web browser akin to a "restrictions escape" much like a sandbox escape? I agree the FeedReader case is more nuanced. It seems what we want here it know if the installed app is going to respect the other lock down settings, e.g. disallowing *facebook.com if set.

[wjt]

Real-life discussion: we could add a new oars category:

• social-internet: mild meaning “has access to arbitrary content, some of which may be saucy, but the app contains its own parental controls feature”. Steam would fall into this category.
• social-internet: extreme meaning “has access to arbitrary content and you can't do anything about it”. lbry would probably fall into this category – when I tested it, it did have a checkbox for “show me adult content” but there was no way a parent could enforce this, and even the non-adult content was somewhat questionable

Where would a browser sit? There are many approaches to parental controls in web browsers – extensions, or network-level filtering, but it's not like it's built in. moderate?

The expected behaviour would be:

• below some age (12? 15?), the presence of any social-internet other than none would prevent the child from installing the app
• the popover in GNOME Software would downplay the other content categories in favour of a description of this one, if present

Motivating example is this popover from Steam:

Steam itself does not contain any of the objectionable content.

[pwithnall]

(FWIW, I’ve pushed a fix for the ‘(null)’ entry in that list to https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-software/merge_requests/356.)