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Bing Filtering Ding Dong
June 17th, 2009 · by David Bradley >> 2 Comments
Microsoft’s new search engine Bing has parents, educators, and others in a flap because it is easy to switch off safe mode and carry on browsing the seedier side of the internet, with video previews displayed right inside the search engine itself.
It seems, however, that they are piping all the “non-safe” surfing results to a different domain – explicit.bing.net – which means that network owners can filter that domain at the internet router level and so prevent anyone (their children, students, employees) from accessing those results.
Of course, Sciencetext readers know all about filtering at the router thanks to previous posts about OpenDNS.
One thing that puzzles me though about all these pr0n filters, is who at Microsoft, or any other company, decides what is unacceptable viewing? If it’s an individual then that individual’s morals may not be the same as yours or mine (to paraphrase Mick Jagger). If it’s an algorithmic filter that simply looks for NSFW words then it could be filtering out legitimate sites that discuss sexuality and sexual health and not just the truly NSFW stuff. I don’t plan to test it too much, either way, but it’s just a thought…
Others discussing Bing’s Ding Dong filter
- Bing Filtering Capabilities Evolve
- Bing vs. Google rematch after Microsoft upgrades explicit filtering
- Bing search makes porn easy to filter out
- Bing ‘better’ than Google for advertisers
2 responses so far ↓
Phil Bradley // Jun 17, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Microsoft has no problem with the concept of censorship. Go to the India version and try a search for sex. No results at all. Then try the UK version with a search for Martin Luther King, and scroll to the bottom of the page, where you’ll see that results have been removed. They don’t tell you why, or what.
And that’s just the stuff that they’re admitting to!
David Bradley // Jun 17, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Oh, I know all about the MLK stuff, it’s all over the web, but yes I wouldn’t expect Microsoft to get it right, would you?