Google Censorship

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 12, 2012, 10:50 pm

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/12/3759 ... h-blocking

Google's filtering smut. They already filter/prioritize search results to get rid of pirated stuff.

Each individual thing maybe not a big deal to some but together, you start to get a little too much determined by Google.

I pretty much use google for just about everything I search for but may need to start researching the engines a little more.

So safe search on/off doesn't mean as much anymore. It they want to protect, they should offer an additional setting of "explicit" if someone doesn't care what pops up on the image search results.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » December 12, 2012, 11:02 pm

They're a business that can do what they wish with their product.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 12, 2012, 11:09 pm

Boogahz wrote:They're a business that can do what they wish with their product.

Um, no shit. Are you going to make a stupid or incredibly obvious comment on every thread?

Search for "whores" on google and bing with safe search off on both. (this is United States right now. Euros still get smut with non detailed smut searches)

zero nudity now on google, 100% nudity on bing

Filters work, not sure how this is going to gain searches on their site. Porn drives everything. Innovation, etc. Microsoft must be celebrating today.

Better move would have been to have Safe, Safe off, and Explicit options.

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » December 13, 2012, 12:57 am

Chrome sucks.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » December 13, 2012, 9:50 am

Worked fine for me. Guess you're doing it wrong.

Only thing new was a pop up to confirm explicit image settings. Maybe you're suppressing that.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 13, 2012, 10:18 am

Boogahz wrote:Worked fine for me. Guess you're doing it wrong.

Only thing new was a pop up to confirm explicit image settings. Maybe you're suppressing that.

I got the same thing (explicit warning)

did you search for "whores" on both bing and google and compare the results?

I got just a bunch of the "inspirational" cards on google while bing was pure smut.

where are you located? Europe isn't affected yet, just the US.

There might be something with being logged in or out of google+/mail as well.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 13, 2012, 10:27 am

Fairweather Pure wrote:Chrome sucks.

It's not chrome, it's google search for all browsers depending on location.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » December 13, 2012, 11:23 am

Nothing new, they're skewing all your search results for their best advantage. Google began to become as useless as Yahoo search a couple years ago, I'd been using Bing for a while but they've enough paying customers now that it's beginning to degrade as well.

News outlets are doing it too both in search results and what they choose to display to you. What Killmoll vs. Spang is fed are going to be different in order to maximize the return traffic.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 13, 2012, 11:28 am

Aabidano wrote:Nothing new, they're skewing all your search results for their best advantage. Google began to become as useless as Yahoo search a couple years ago, I'd been using Bing for a while but they've enough paying customers now that it's beginning to degrade as well.

News outlets are doing it too both in search results and what they choose to display to you. What Killmoll vs. Spang is fed are going to be different in order to maximize the return traffic.

Skewed results is nothing new but this was a major change. The search results are completely different.

I'll be trying Bing out at my search engine for awhile. The point isn't a "porn" search but how incredibly high the filter is set even on safe off searches now on google. The simple solution would have been to add an explicit opt-in choice.

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » December 13, 2012, 12:45 pm

I agree that search tailoring is annoying, since it means finding articles that don't reinforce your existing position is harder, however; between Bing showing a lot of bestiality images on the first page of your proposed search and Google requiring me to actually add the word "horse" to the search to see that shit, I'm going to go ahead and agree with Google's "filter".

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 13, 2012, 1:32 pm

Zaelath wrote:I agree that search tailoring is annoying, since it means finding articles that don't reinforce your existing position is harder, however; between Bing showing a lot of bestiality images on the first page of your proposed search and Google requiring me to actually add the word "horse" to the search to see that shit, I'm going to go ahead and agree with Google's "filter".

whores

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » December 13, 2012, 2:37 pm

Winnow wrote:
Zaelath wrote:I agree that search tailoring is annoying, since it means finding articles that don't reinforce your existing position is harder, however; between Bing showing a lot of bestiality images on the first page of your proposed search and Google requiring me to actually add the word "horse" to the search to see that shit, I'm going to go ahead and agree with Google's "filter".

whores

yeah, that's what I used. What I'm saying additionally is you see more similar images with:

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=whores
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&saf ... ores+horse

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 13, 2012, 3:26 pm

Zaelath wrote:
Winnow wrote:
Zaelath wrote:I agree that search tailoring is annoying, since it means finding articles that don't reinforce your existing position is harder, however; between Bing showing a lot of bestiality images on the first page of your proposed search and Google requiring me to actually add the word "horse" to the search to see that shit, I'm going to go ahead and agree with Google's "filter".

whores
yeah, that's what I used. What I'm saying additionally is you see more similar images with:

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=whores
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&saf ... ores+horse

wtf do I want to add "horse" to my searches for?

The filter is way too strong. Even if you're not specifically looking for porn, it filters too much if you're a grown adult and don't mind if search results aren't pg-13.

I'd rather have an option to allow all explicit than have google decide for me and require specific searches. I don't mind if they add additional filter options but not giving the option will probably cost them views. The bazillion studies on porn and the internet will verify that.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » December 13, 2012, 3:30 pm

Where's your VPN tunnel exiting at? Local legal requirement maybe?

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » December 13, 2012, 4:09 pm

I can't keep myself from laughing every time horse comes up in this thread.

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » December 13, 2012, 4:25 pm

Winnow wrote: wtf do I want to add "horse" to my searches for?

Not saying you would, but Bing sure thinks "whores" = "horse fucker". 50% of the first 10 images on their search feature Mr Ed.

Spoiler: NSFW, possibly not legal in your jurisdiction.

[Show]

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » December 13, 2012, 5:31 pm

Maybe equine prostitution is a big thing in one of their markets?

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » December 13, 2012, 7:52 pm

Aabidano wrote:Maybe equine prostitution is a big thing in one of their markets?

Isn't that what the retired male racing horses get used for?

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 13, 2012, 8:03 pm

Aabidano wrote:Where's your VPN tunnel exiting at? Local legal requirement maybe?

I turned it off for the test.

Bottom line:

if you do a search for "Whores" are you expecting to see inspirational quote posters fill the entire page or pictures, or are you expecting to see whores? Clothed or not, "Whores" now means pretty much means only "inspirational posters" on google.

Google has made it harder to find NSFW pictures through image search, giving a whole lot of people a new reason to switch to Bing.

It is now a lot more difficult to find images of porn through Google’s image search. The company has tweaked its SafeSearch settings for images to better match those of traditional Web searches. Which apparently means hiding a whole lot of naughty bits.

Until yesterday, Google set its SafeSearch filter to “moderate” by default. This hid most images of nudity, but some still would slip through the cracks now and then. If you were on a quest to find pornographic (or “artistic,” if you want to lie about it) images, then you could set the SafeSearch filter to “off.” If “moderate” was still too racy for you (or your kids), then you could change the filter to “strict,” which hid anything even remotely controversial.

Turning SafeSearch off is now not an option. Moderate is gone, too. In their place, Google has made is so that any search that is not specifically for NSFW content will turn up results that feature far more clothing. For example, if you search for “boobs” – something I’m certain none of you have ever done – no longer will you get the blast of flesh anywhere in the results. If that’s still not safe-for-work enough for you, it’s still possible to turn on strict filtering.

Along with doing that, they also went hardcore right wing religious conservative on the filtered search results. Even for a normal search, that's too much to take as it filters out stuff I might want, especially with art, etc.

Just saying it was incredibly stupid for google to not include an "explicit" option that you must set, in order to keep which was once the status quo.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » December 14, 2012, 3:45 pm

There have been multiple articles recently proving Winnow's statement(s) above. Even with explicit enabled and safesearch turned off, Googles results of nudity (in image searches) and porn (in text searches) are MUCH more filtered than before.

As Winnow said above, it's time to find another search engine. Bing sure as hell isn't it.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » December 14, 2012, 5:07 pm

Winnow wrote:Along with doing that, they also went hardcore right wing religious conservative on the filtered search results. Even for a normal search, that's too much to take as it filters out stuff I might want, especially with art, etc.

Passing thought - wonder if the sudden change was a suckup to the republicans/religious right in exchange for not slamming them for their creative (and seemingly entirely legal) methods of weaseling out of billions of dollars in US taxes?

Bing is better, that said I've been using MillionShort for quite a while, and will fire up Tor to use StartpageHTTPS in other cases.

*A search for whores gives me a mental picture of some crackhead chicken neck in Detroit. Ick, no thanks.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 14, 2012, 7:46 pm

Bing seems ok so far. It's already better for image searches, now we'll have to see about text. I really wonder about the reasons behind the change because it will cost google views which is really all that's important to a search engine driven company.

I really don't get it. They just needed add an "explicit" opt-in option. For me, the huge deal is art. I collect a ton of it. A few millions of images. I don't want to have to do separate searches for nude and non nude results. One of my top five artists, Luis Royo has about 20% of his paintings that include nudity mixed in with other fantasy/sci fi paintings. I don't want to a significant part of someone's art because they happen to have nudity. It's a really dumb decision on google's part.

On the positive side, I think this will put a spark back into the search engine industry and maybe promote some actual choice again as opposed to the total domination google has had since the Yahoo and Alta Vista days.

I'm very old school when it comes to censorship on the internet. I prefer some noise/garbage mixed in with my searches as opposed to the opposite which is overly strict filtering/censorship of my results.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » December 14, 2012, 7:56 pm

There IS an explicit opt-in. It is in the Safe-search menu.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 14, 2012, 8:09 pm

Boogahz wrote:There IS an explicit opt-in. It is in the Safe-search menu.

Yeah, it doesn't do shit. I have explicit filtering unchecked. That just allows you to see nudity if you do a specific enough search.

Search for whores with it on of off. Doesn't matter. You get inspirational/motivational images either way. Now go search for whores on bing. Search for Luis Royo on google with or without the explicit tag. doesn't matter. now go search bing. What point is the explicit option if you don't see anything unless you make detailed searches?

The point is that you may not necessarily know to search for "whore shoving an apple up her ass" so there's no way you're going to see a whore shove an apple up her ass on google, ever, while that will be one of the results on bing. When you're searching for images, half the usefulness is discovering new things.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » December 14, 2012, 8:21 pm

I did the searches already. Once the explicit box was checked, all was normal.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 14, 2012, 8:43 pm

Boogahz wrote:I did the searches already. Once the explicit box was checked, all was normal.

Thank god for you. move along. The rest that have a clue what's going on can still participate in the discussion.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » December 14, 2012, 8:47 pm

Do you do anything but whine anymore?

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » December 15, 2012, 9:03 am

Winnow wrote:Bing seems ok so far. It's already better for image searches, now we'll have to see about text. I really wonder about the reasons behind the change because it will cost google views which is really all that's important to a search engine driven company.

But I suspect not views by anyone who is paying them or earns them much revenue. Cash is king and being able to exclude such a huge slice of traffic would be a huge cost avoidance? Push that cost & reputation off on a competitor?

Siji · Post by **Siji** » December 18, 2012, 11:14 am

The thing which could affect them is defaulting.. people often/usually set their default search engine and go from there. This means much less traffic to Google when people move away from it. Not just some of a user's searches, but all of them.

The only two things I really depend on from Google these days is Google Reader (which they've already tried to kill and screw up - but every other RSS app imports from this and every RSS feed seems already set up to subscribe with it) and Gmail. I depend on, and recommend Gmail over all other web based mail simply because (a) they don't charge to retrieve it with Outlook and (b) I'm fairly confident that it's going to be around for a long time, thus I don't fear making it my primary email and having it go away. I could use Hotmail or Outlook.com but I don't like either and last I checked they don't allow free POP retrieval (actually, I think Outlook.com does). Same with Yahoo. Besides it seems Gmail does a better job at filtering spam. But for search, I'm fine with using Bing (which I don't like personally) if Google continues censoring my Internet usage.

I've tried getting into Google docs, Google drive, Latitude, etc but they just don't do it for me. I'm a proud paying customer of Dropbox and having tried SugarSync, Google Drive and Microsoft's version I find it to be the best overall. Latitude? Eh, FourSquare. Google Docs? Eh.. I'm addicted to MS Office. Picassa I do like for cataloging my pictures, but don't really use anymore for whatever reason (time really - and I've lost my DB of tags for pictures too many times in OS reinstalls). And didn't they also semi-recently do something with that as well? I was a fan of their calendar sync (with Outlook) years ago but iPhone integration with my work and home calendars is sufficient. Google Blogger is ok I guess, but again no time or incentive to keep it up to date. G+ just outright annoys me. I hate it with much passion.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 18, 2012, 11:34 am

Siji wrote:The thing which could affect them is defaulting.. people often/usually set their default search engine and go from there. This means much less traffic to Google when people move away from it. Not just some of a user's searches, but all of them.

The only two things I really depend on from Google these days is Google Reader (which they've already tried to kill and screw up - but every other RSS app imports from this and every RSS feed seems already set up to subscribe with it) and Gmail. I depend on, and recommend Gmail.

I've tried getting into Google docs, Google drive, Latitude, etc but they just don't do it for me. I'm a proud paying customer of Dropbox and having tried SugarSync, Google Drive and Microsoft's version I find it to be the best overall. Latitude? Eh, FourSquare. Google Docs? Eh.. I'm addicted to MS Office. Picassa I do like for cataloging my pictures, but don't really use anymore for whatever reason (time really - and I've lost my DB of tags for pictures too many times in OS reinstalls).

I just randomly cut some of your post out to make a quote.

Google does need to watch out on search engine. In Firefox, it's easy enough to switch to another search engine using a drop down box...and easy to never touch it again. If Bing improves a bit, that search box just might stay on Bing. I've used Google a long time but I think it's time to switch it up a bit and try new things.

As for cloud storage, google drive doesn't seem to do it for me. I don't use cloud storage much. I use Microsoft's Skydrive mostly because I was grandfathered into 25GB of free storage space. I have them all though, drop box, sugar synch, Box, etc. Skydrive requires you to log in with a Live account to download larger files. Not sure about other services.

As for RSS newreaders, I stay away from google when possible. Most of the news apps I recommend (Zite in particular, Prismatic for iPhone) don't require google. I get my news from RSS LIVE drop down feeds right off my firefox toolbar so I dont' user any dedicated service.

Pocket is an awesome place to put articles for future access/reading from all news sources. It has it's own very good "reader" formatting of articles you save there. You can use an add-on to do one-click saving of articles/websites and most major news apps have pocket support built in, and even if you they don't, you just email the article to add@getpocket.com from any email address you register with Pocket and it adds the article to list.

I'm not anti Google but plan to be less reliant on them and just take advantage of their best services (google maps, etc)

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » December 18, 2012, 3:18 pm

Winnow wrote:I'm not anti Google but plan to be less reliant on them and just take advantage of their best services (google maps, etc)

You aren't their target either, they seem to have their heads in straight in that regard anyway. By filtering porn by default they're doing something that will reduce the annoyance of 99% of their users who will likely never notice that it happened but won't jump ship to another search engine when grandma or little Billy runs into images of horse whoring when searching for new ways to prepare Hamburger Helper with (w)horse meat.

Tailoring is a fine line to walk, they chased me off with it. It's done in a number of search providers aiming for quick CEO enrichment followed by release of the golden parachute.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 18, 2012, 3:34 pm

Aabidano wrote:
Winnow wrote:I'm not anti Google but plan to be less reliant on them and just take advantage of their best services (google maps, etc)
You aren't their target either, they seem to have their heads in straight in that regard anyway. By filtering porn by default they're doing something that will reduce the annoyance of 99% of their users who will likely never notice that it happened but won't jump ship to another search engine when grandma or little Billy runs into images of horse whoring when searching for new ways to prepare Hamburger Helper with (w)horse meat.

First, I'm not searching for porn. Even more "normal" searches for art, etc are severely filtered. Second, I don't give a damn what the default it for the "common folk" who don't have a clue. Adding the option to Opt-In for explicit searches is all that's needed. That option can be buried ten menus deep for all I care so the "common folk" can't get to it.

The issue is really, even with non porn searches, an overly restrictive filtering system that can't be turned off. I completely agree that the default searches should be safe searches. Don't underestimate the power of porn and its money making as well though. You act like it's some small perv minority segment of society that searches for it while it's really more like the majority.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » December 18, 2012, 3:51 pm

The problem with "Its just porn it doesn't affect me" is that porn is just the tip of the iceberg. Where does it stop? Obviously they're already doing it for piracy related stuff apparently. My personal opinion is a search engine shouldn't filter anything.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » December 18, 2012, 5:33 pm

Porn built the internet and still drives some amount of traffic but the level of the big, non-carrier, non-HW vendor players I suspect it's a minority business at this stage. With everything else that's arisen in the last ~10 years it's still a bandwidth hog at the trough for sure, but one of many.

The issue is really, even with non porn searches, an overly restrictive filtering system that can't be turned off.

Porn/art with nudity/whores/horse whores was the general example so I stuck with it. If they're being puritanical it's all the same to them.

The problem with "Its just porn it doesn't affect me" is that porn is just the tip of the iceberg. Where does it stop?

I agree with you in principle but this is capitalism in action.

They're a business. Unlike Apple they don't make any pretense of being anything but a profit making machine. This makes them more money from their advertisers, the base product being everyone who uses a Google service.

Leonaerd · Post by **Leonaerd** » December 18, 2012, 6:08 pm

In a very real way, I like that it's becoming increasingly obvious that Google filters / modifies searches. It will cause eager startups to appear, knowing they have a dissatisfied audience to cater to. This will only result in good things for us consumers.

Until they pull the plug.

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » December 19, 2012, 11:19 am

maybe someone should develope a Porn only search engine. the only results from a search will be porn related in someway. Search for Milk and all you find are things about breasts. I bet whoever makes that will be a bazillionaire.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » December 19, 2012, 12:18 pm

Someone needs to pay for it though and people looking for porn today are far more apt to steal it than pay anything, let alone list price.

If they had to walk into their local PornMart and pay for it porn consumption levels would plummet to 1990 levels for a number of reasons.

Not one of my areas of interest, would assume it works on the same model as the rest of the internet though. Banners, clicks, selling out your customers, etc... With the addition of being a vector for lots of malware from all reports.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » December 19, 2012, 12:43 pm

Bubba Grizz wrote:maybe someone should develope a Porn only search engine. the only results from a search will be porn related in someway. Search for Milk and all you find are things about breasts. I bet whoever makes that will be a bazillionaire.

I think that will happen but that still doesn't get Google off the hook for not allowing general searches that allow explicit results. I want both results to show as normal searches are filtering out results that I want, and shouldn't need to make multiple searches for. It also prevents the possibility of discovering new things as the strict search terms necessary eliminate that. Bad move on google's part to not allow an opt-in for the original search results.

As with music, people steal/pay for porn. A porn search engine would be profitable. Most of the porn images you see lead to pay porn sites anyway.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » December 31, 2012, 4:46 am

Bubba Grizz wrote:maybe someone should develope a Porn only search engine. the only results from a search will be porn related in someway. Search for Milk and all you find are things about breasts. I bet whoever makes that will be a bazillionaire.

They already have, long ago. Even had a very 'google-like' logo but for some reason I simply can't remember what the hell it was called now. For .xxx domains you can use http://www.search.xxx, there's also http://www.askjolene.com.. those are just the first two I found (on a Google search!) so I'm sure there are others if you had a need to actually find a porn specific search engine.

~~Damn it's going to bother me that I can't remember the name of that one which came up years ago..~~

http://www.booble.com/

Although they've changed it a lot since I last saw it.