Google To Partner With SurfWatch

thelonius writes "According to this press release, Google is traipsing down that questionable path of content filtering. They are partnering with SurfWatch, anyone know their track record for overzealous or politically skewed blocking? Let's hope Google deploys this as an option which can be turned off..." I expect they will. SurfWatch is one of the few censorware packages that blocks by keyword-match on URL; e.g. this anti-pornography page is blindly blocked because of its URL.

Hmm

[mattc]

Actually this might not be a bad idea, as long as it is optional. How often have you searched for a legitimate topic and ended up with a bunch of porn sites instead?

Say for example your daughter wants to search for "cheerleading" but doesn't want to look at porn sites .. a "no porn" option would be great!

Self-censoring

[Amit J. Patel]

Search engines aren't perfect. Some people don't *want* to see certain topics when they're searching for something totally unrelated. So NetNanny, SurfWatch, etc., are somewhat useful for that. But they aren't perfect either, and they tend to overfilter than underfilter. I think this is from market forces -- a user is going to notice if porn slips through, but isn't going to notice if the Smithsonian is missing -- so the products that succeed will tend to overfilter. :(

But what's important is that filtering has to be a choice at the individual level, not something imposed by a government. I don't think Google's saying that it's going to force all its users to use SurfWatch. (That'd be CRAZY!) It's just giving them an option.

Whether parents should be able to make choices for their children is an orthogonal issue. Should parents get to pick schools for their kids? Clothes? Religion? Family filter? Alcohol? R-rated movies? I think it's worthy of debate, but I don't think we should limit it to Internet content filter software.

Censor Microsoft!

[AviN]

Perhaps Google should censor the word "windows" because I don't like Microsoft.

You all are forgetting something important here

[Randy Rathbun]

Surfwatch's track record. It is abysmal.

According to Peacefire.org [peacefire.org], Surfwatch has blocked:

Whitehouse.gov page about Bill, Hilary, Al and Tipper because it was named "couples.html"

Tons of pages about STDs

Tons of pages about gay rights

Tripod's "Ask the Doctor" pages about health and sexuality

Facts about sexual assault

Surfwatch also claimed *they* were the reason the CDA was overturned.

Google is a great place to look for Linux info. But let's now contemplate what kinds of stuff are going to be blocked based on Surfwatch's "everything about sex" stance.

http://www.debian.org/Packages/stable/editors/se x.html - the Simple editor for Debian package description.

http://www.debian.org/Packages/stable/base/libc6 .html - it is linked to from the above page

http://www.debian.org/Packages/stable/x11/xlib6g .html - it too is linked to from the above page

And those examples are from link number 4 when I did a search for "linux sex". There are 39,093 other possible pages.

If Google is trying to keep the search engine spammers out, then give me a reporting address or a reporting web page where I can plop a url in so they can do what *should* be done in the first place - block the search engine spammers from ever being there again.

And no, what I am saying has nothing to do with me wanting to censor. It has everything to do with wanting good results back that don't waste my time.

Unfortunately, I don't think Google is going to win if they implement this totally idiotic idea. I for one will never use them again if they do.

Blarney Google

[Seth Finkelstein]

Enter the following keywords to Google : sex lies censorware

First hit, a critical essay:

Sex, Lies and Censorware [spectacle.org]

... Sex, Lies and Censorware By James S. Tyre..

Also referenced on the third hit, and later.

Turn on "SafeSearch".

You can't find the essay anywhere in the returned results.

Similar results with: lies censorware tyre

Apparently it's safety from criticism too ...

- the Boston Lunatic

Re:Hmm

[bgdarnel]

Actually this might not be a bad idea, as long as it is optional. How often have you searched for a legitimate topic and ended up with a bunch of porn sites instead?

With Google, never. Other engines (like AltaVista) have this problem (AltaVista already has a "family filter" option), but I've never seen it on Google.

Re:Hmm

[tvalien]

mattc asks How often have you searched for a legitimate topic and ended up with a bunch of porn sites instead?

I feel left out, as this has never happened to me. Not for lack of searching... (I didn't get any damn love letters, either.)

What am I doing wrong?

Re:Hmm

[puppet10]

Yes Yes. I agree completely.
Google is terrific at getting to actual content without having to filter through tons of crap (try a search on cheerleading no porn at all).

Altavista can be ok, even without the filter but you need to remember to require all terms, and not use ones commonly in porn sites (like cheerleeding). It is much easier to accidentally get porn sites from searches on Altavista (particularly if you are a novice).

Re:Self-censoring

[grahamm]

In theory any search engine should be a superset of the filtering software. Filtering software works only a small number of criteria, but it would be nice to be able to define a search based on the user's criteria. Having filters (both positive and negative) on such things as

• mailing list archives
• Sites where the items matching the search key may be purchased.
• Online product manuals
• Text is in meta tags, <Hn> tags, or the page body.

could be very useful.

Can Google's tech "detect" pornography?

[OldSoldier]

While others have serious doubts about surfwatch, it needs to be said that Google is quite fantastic. As I recall, Google rates sites based (somehow) on the quantity of references to said site. This may turn out to be a very effective approach to detecting pornography.

To make an example, imagine searching for "female breasts", either for pornographic reasons or for breast cancer reasons. I can almost imagine the citations for pornography and medical as being completely non-overlapping. If Google can detect this (maybe by relying on surfwatch's database) and take appropriate action, this could have quite a high success rate.

But as in all things, I would certainly like to be able to CHOOSE whether this is active or not.

Re:Hmm

[AviN]

The problem I have with it is that it's enabled by default. I think they should have filtering disabled by default and give the user the option to enable it.