Deladao is the software our school currently uses to monitor student activity and block certain sites. This is a change from the last few years, when the school used Goguardian to do the same. This change is terrible for the Medway school district. Deladao is one of the worst options they could have gone with.
To be fair, there are a few upsides to using Deladao over Goguardian. These upsides were the reasons for the switch supplied to me by the Director of Information Services for Medway, Richard Boucher. The first upside involves the technology itself. Goguardian uses older technology that only blocks sites or searches, and is “often ineffective in the age of dynamic content” (Boucher). Deladao uses AI to block sites, searches, and content on unblocked sites. One of the primary reasons for the switch was that Goguardian failed the tests performed by professionals within the town, that were meant to make sure the system aligns with state regulations. Another primary reason was that students were able to find ways to get around the Goguardian’s system, while Deladao’s ProxyGuard™ makes sure students can not get around the blocking or filtering systems.
Based on the most recent public data, Medway High School has 622 students. With that number, my research shows that Deladao costs $5.22 per student, which ends up as around $3250 per year for the high school, and about $11250 for the district. Even though Goguardian’s pricing was much harder to locate without signing up for an email list. I eventually got help from someone at Genesis Technology through a conversation on the website (image 1). Goguardian costs about $4000-$7000 per year ($6-$11 per student) for the high school. Thanks again to Mr. Boucher, from whom I have learned that the yearly price for GoGuardian was $19,500 for the district, while Deledao is $22,500 for the whole district. So it’s actually more expensive than Goguardian.
Deladao has many problems. For one, it gets things wrong–a lot. This includes incorrect reasons for blocking something, like blocking a math question for violence, and blocking things that shouldn’t be blocked. As of November 11, 2025, the issue has been fixed, but that’s no guarantee that problems will no longer arise. Also, it took at least a month for them to fix it. Recently, I was looking at a video about Canadian politics, and it got blocked for games after the ad finished playing. This is the screen recording of the event, link.
Two problems are involved in the reporting system to unblock school-relevant sites. The first is that the reporting system doesn’t work. Out of the many people (including myself), in various classes, that I have watched submit reports, every time, with one exception, that a report is submitted to fix an error, it is neither changed nor unblocked. At that point, why have a reporting system? The second problem with the reporting system is that it adds work to teachers. The only way to see something get unblocked is to report it through the teacher. This adds more work for teachers. Goguardian’s teacher blocking system added work to teachers, but it was voluntary. Teachers weren’t forced to do extra work in order for a student to be able to use a website for class that got mislabeled and blocked. After my research, Mr. Boucher informed me that the best way to report errors and get things unblocked is to email the site URL and a screenshot to [email protected]
Additionally, Deladao can lie. Jack Sempey, a student at Medway High, told me a that Deladao showed a tab to his teacher that he had closed before the test, but it was showing up as still open when he started the test, thus causing him to get into trouble with the teacher for cheating when he didn’t.
Another recent issue is that Deledao frequently blocks school generated surveys that may contain sensitive words. It blocked the Metrowest survey, administered on November 13th for its mention of drugs. This was made worse by the dysfunctional reporting system since there was no way to get the survey unlocked. This led to the school having to scramble to get the survey to work without turning off Deladao. This is a problem because it is hard to get exceptions to the blocking that Deladao does. If there was a question on MCAS, the PSATs, or worse, an AP test, that is about drugs or something else that’s on the banned list, it would lessen the amount of time available to students to take the tests while the admins try to fix it. Goguardian did not have this problem since the blocking system was less broad and didn’t run on an AI bot that makes it harder to create exceptions.
Deladao has also attempted to eliminate its competition. During my research, I attempted to find reviews for Goguardian. Deladao blocked 2 out of the 4 sites I went to. It didn’t want me to see the reviews for the competition. While this could be an example of wrongly blocking sites, it is eliminating the competition because on the same review sites, the Deladao reviews weren’t blocked (image 2 for Deladao reviews). From the unblocked sites, I acquired the information in image 3.
AI has been proven to have negative effects on the environment. MIT News reported on water and energy usage of AI. Deladao uses AI to block things, filter information, and filter sites. This requires an enormous amount of natural resources that could be used elsewhere. Although Goguardian also uses AI in its filtering, it is not primarily run by AI. Certain things are blocked using AI, but many of the sites visited by students ultimately get blocked by administrators. Deladao is almost exclusively AI and thus has more of an impact on the environment.
Another issue with Deladao is intrusive filtering and censorship. From personal experience, I have seen Deladao cover words that it deemed inappropriate on a Google Slides made by my teacher. This story is supported by my classmates. There were other words that it should have blocked, using this logic, but weren’t, another example of Deladao getting things wrong. This leads to the censorship issue. If the AI deems something as inappropriate for students, why should it be able to remove it? The AI censorship is unmonitored, so it could block anything it decides fits into the criteria of being blocked without the context in which the content occurs. Because it runs on everything, blocking anything it deems inappropriate, even in news articles (also from personal experience), this could influence students to think or believe a certain thing. This is supported by many studies on AI bias and is explained by Chapman University’s AI Hub. Teachers are unable to share their own bias since they can’t influence the children’s thoughts and opinions, but AI can?
While there is certainly a need to keep children safe on school technology, Deladao is not the best solution to this due to its many problems and inconsistencies.
