MSN Search Blocking Results For XFree86?

Peacefire writes "Thomas Shaddack spotted this on http://www.root.cz/ (in Czech) -- if you go to http://search.msn.com/ and search for 'XFree86', it tells you that you've 'entered a search term that is likely to return adult content', and directs you to the porn search engine NightSurf.com, which lists a bunch of porn sites that ostensibly match the term 'XFree86'. If you search for 'XFree86' on Google, however, it's clear that the top matching terms returned by a normal search, are XFree86 sites, are not a bunch of porn sites. MSN is apparently blocking the specific term 'XFree86' and not just filtering on something stupid like the 'X' or the 'Free', since you can search for 'XFree85' and 'XFree87' with no problem. And search terms like 'Linux', 'AOL' and 'Macintosh' are allowed, so at least MSN hasn't simply blacklisted all competitors' keywords as 'porn', but why would they be blocking 'XFree86'?"

Mirror List

[RobertB-DC]

Since it's about to get Slashdotted, here is the mirror list section from the xfree86.org [xfree86.org] site:

Web Mirrors

Our web site is very busy and often causes timed out connections. The following sites have been verified as being both accurate and reliable in their mirroring process, and so we recommend these for the best access:

Costa Rica [ulatina.ac.cr]
Copenhagen, Denmark [opensource.cph.dk]
Paris, France [ovh.net]
St. Denis, France [univ-paris8.fr]
Berlin, Germany [berlios.de]
Dortmund, Germany [desiato.de]
Athens, Greece [xfree86.ntua.gr]
Seoul, Korea [mirror.or.kr]
Amsterdam, Netherlands [kookel.org]
Bucharest, Romania [unibuc.ro]
London, United Kingdom [earth.li]

Not posting as AC 'cause the troll potential would be too high...

Re:What's weird

[Anonymous Crowhead]

As does Xfree [msn.com]

Re:X Windows

[trmj]

Just look how "Lindows" Has had to change it's website to l---ws.com in several European countries

I believe you mean lin---s.com [lin---s.com]

Working terms...

[Anonymous Coward]

- FreeX86
- XFree87
- XFree 86
- X Free 86

As you can see they are clearly only blocking "XFree86", and not other combinations. Not the site itself, which is clearly listed, but searching for XFree86 works.

Re:What's weird

[Svartormr]

And searching for ia32 [msn.com] doesn't have an Intel site in the first 15 hits.

But think of the proles!

[MacFury]

The general populous uses Microsoft products, if those products prohibit you from looking at alternatives...well...that's a big damn problem.

Funnier still...

[thesolo]

Guess what a search for XFree87 gives you as its top result? This slashdot article, talking about Xouvert (an XFree Fork)! [slashdot.org]

Honestly, this seems more like incompetence than censorship.

Re:What's weird

[Ctrl-Z]

Here's a search for a possible culprit - just x86. Seems fine, although notice how the first 9 results are all AMD, with some impostor Intel claiming #10 spot (and it's not even Intel's site, it's Solaris on Intel document).

This is unsurprising. Intel in general does not refer to them as x86.

Google search result [google.com]

Re:X Windows

[Hal-9001]

I guess then it's a good thing that it's not actually named "X Windows", but rather the "X Window System." [x.org]

Re:More likely a stupid mistake...

[KSoA]

And searching "XFree 86" returns xfree86.org...

Re:Interesting - tinfoil hat time

[Anonymous Coward]

If you put a 't' after 'be' it all makes sense...

Workaround

[ksemlerK]

Here is a workaround. Search for the term "XFree86+Unix http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=XFree86%2BUni x&FORM=SMCRT. This will pull up the most relevant sites related to the X Windowing system.

(I need to pay more attention...)

[Ungrounded Lightning]

If you start out as an MS user and hear about this other operating system,

Argh! I was THINKING BSD while TYPING about X. Guess I'm not being cluefull today. B-(

But the point is still valid - finding out about a windowing system that's portable across other operating systems could help lead to conversion to the other op systems - and weaning from MSware.

Re:What's weird

[arkanes]

XFree86 is certainly blocked specifically. XFree86+any other term is not. It's _not_ that the porn site results are hits for XFree86, nightsearch returns the exact same first page results for _any_ search, including random garbage.

As other people have said, I doubt theres any gain for MS from doing this, so it's probably a term that was tossed in by programmers for debugging purposes or just for the hell of it, rather than some sort of official policy decision.

Re:What's weird

[Gherald]

silly, intel writes ia-32 [msn.com] which has at least 4 intel sites in the first 15 hits.

Re:nightsurf!

[arkanes]

Despite the implication, nightsurf is not actually a search engine. It returns exactly the same results for any search term.

Ah ha, upon further checking this is not true. It returns the exact same search results for anything thats not porn related, so this is probably a listing of the sites that paid for "any results" postings (Nightsurf doesn't even pretend to be anything other than pay-for-placement). A search for the sexual fetish of your choice does return results related to that fetish, however.

This is Microsoft bashing, plain and simple

[dalabrat]

Goto http://search.msn.com select "Advanced Search" put in XFree86 then click on search.

You'll get a page with a box that has "Sponsored Sites" at the top and a link to NightSurf.com

Now click on the link below that box that says "Go Back to MSN Search"

OMG.... it's the results of the search for XFree86.. perhapse their "BETA" search engine is having problems with the basic search and sponsored links code. Overall the original article is BS since they rushed to slam Microsoft and didn't double check everything.

Follow the money folks

[Tin Foil Hat]

I'm a fairly competent internet programmer, so here's my analysis: follow the money. First thing to examine is the url that MS presents. I've split it into multiple lines for readability. Notice that it contains two other urls as parameters.

http://search.msn.com/adpassthru.aspx
?ADTARGET=http://ads.msn.com/ads/adredir.asp
%3F&TARGET=http://apps.NightSurf.com/~wsapi/nssear ch.dll
%3Fdealcode%3Dmsn%26src%3D1%26key%3D&QUERY=xfree86
&IMG=http://ads.msn.com/ads/IMGWB3/004400170001_TR .gif

This url takes you back to the msn search site so that it can record your click. The search site responds with a code 302 (Document moved) and redirects you to ads.msn.com. Here is the url for that. Notice the similarity.

http://ads.msn.com/ads/adredir.asp
?url=http%3a%2f%2fapps.NightSurf.com
%2f%7ewsapi%2fnssearch.dll
%3fdealcode%3dmsn%26src%3d1%26key%3dxfree86
&image=http://ads.msn.com/ads/IMGWB3/004400170001_ TR.gif

This ad site responds with another redirect that finally takes you to nightsurf. Here is the url for that.

http://apps.NightSurf.com/~wsapi/nssearch.dll?de al code=msn&src=1&key=xfree86

Now here's where it really gets interesting. Notice the dealcode and key parameters in particular. They would seem to imply that MSN has some kind of deal with NightSurf.

I have to conclude that NightSurf paid MSN to feature it's ad (that's what it is, not a search result) when users type in 'XFree86'. I had difficulty understanding why a porn search site would want to do something like that, so I started investigating. First stop, betterwhois.com. Here's what they have to say about NightSurf.com.

Registrant:
WebPower Inc.
ATTN: NIGHTSURF.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA. 20172-0447

Domain Name: NIGHTSURF.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Inc., WP [e-mail] m
ATTN: NIGHTSURF.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA 20172-0447
570-708-8780

It seems that this is a private listing from Network Solutions and any further investigation will have to include sending an email to the listed address.

So the question remains, why is NightSurf.com (A.K.A. Web Power, Inc.) paying Microsoft for the XFree86 keyword? Did Microsoft knowingly accept that or was it more automated? Do I or do I not have a hole in my hat?

A reason maybe...

[niittyniemi]

> So to me it does not look like "some porn sites plastered
> the term "XFree86" all over themselves", but more like a
> suspiciously blocked search query.


A "friend" (cough) told me that there is a porn site with xfree in it's URL.

BTW, a search for "latex" comes up with Mac TeX second down but with the Windows port MiKTeX [miktex.org] nowhere to be seen. I wonder why....

Graphical comparision of search results

[glassesmonkey]

Here's what "XFree86" shows for two more search engines. Really is interesting graphical results.
Yahoo vs. Google [langreiter.com]

A simple explanation

[TanRanger]

Although I don't think MS is beneath filtering XFree86 out, I think I know how they'll explain this (if they so bother).

XFree86 does something that XFree69, XFree87, "X Free 86," etc. do not:

It returns 2 million hits in google.

(I quote figures for google since, obviously, msn's filters prevent us from measuring how many results their engine returns)

I think MS will claim (again, if they decide to respond at all) that their algorithm notices the suspect strings ("X" and "Free") as well as the fact that the number of hits is similar to those for truly naughty searches.

"XFree86" is a single 'token' that raises all three of these hypothetical red flags. If you enter "X Free 86" (including the spaces) into a search engine, the search string decomposes into three tokens that each raise no more than two red flags.

Evidence:

Search_Term, Google_Hits, MSN_Flags_as_porn
XFree86, 2.4 Million, yes
XFree87, 7, no
XFree85, 181, no
XFree69, 0, no
X, 300 Million, no
Free, 600 Million, no
freesex, 2.2 Million, yes

However, I should point out that the number of google results may not be a reasonable indicator of the frequency of occurences within MS's own database. If you search for "86" on both engines, google indicates 44 million hits, while MSN claims to have only 36 (that's thirty-six, not thirty-six million).

(I still think they're doing it on purpose, though ;-)

Search for GNU or GPL

[giannifive]

You know what's fun? Search for "GNU" or "GPL" on MSN, and compare that with Google. The GNU website is the first hit on Google, but doesn't even appear on the first page of MSN. The first MSN result is an African safari thing... The first MSN hit for "GPL" is: "InfoWorld - SCO: IBM Cannot Enforce GPL". Insane.

Re:What's weird

[gasgesgos]

it was just a wild theory. I've done some clean searches on google and I've gotten many porn site results, especially in the first page. I just figured that the same thing happened to MSN, and that MSN blocked the results because of the prevalent adult content in the results.

I'm not trying to defend microsoft, I was just trying to offer a rational explanation.

Even weirder... XFREE = XFREE86 result

[koa]

Try doing a search for "Xfree", it actually pulls up "Xfree68" as the first result!

now thats odd.

"rights under this supplemental EULA"

[tepples]

Users in the United States don't need no steenkin' "rights under this supplemental EULA" because they have 17 USC 117 [cornell.edu], which provides a defense against copyright infringement to the owner of a "copy" (a "copy" being a physical medium, such as a hard drive, on which a work is fixed).

I work for MSN Search

[Anonymous Coward]

And the adult filtering is exactly the kind of desultory beauracratic list you would expect, 4305 terms that somone must have pulled from one day of sampling 2 years ago, with a {0,2} wildcard slapped on the ends. One of the terms is 'XXXFREE'.

QED.

Re:What's weird

[jkrausyao]

The filter for these "bad" search terms is limited in that using it twice will produce results and not a block message.

The first match for Xfree86 +Xfree86 is http://www.xfree86.org/

While searching for porn +porn also finds many sites without a block message. The first found site also has a bunch of popups. Just had to check that the links worked :)

Re:MS Links Back to Slashdot

[UserGoogol]

Or, more practically, XFree86 of [msn.com], which, as it happens, returns no porn.

Now, either porn sites have something against prepositions, or Microsoft is doing something funny.

Re:Follow the money folks

[Anonymous Coward]

This article goes over the MS NightSurf bs. http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0106/tech-gu nn.shtml

Re:XFree 86

[Principal Skinner]

For those who missed it, the parent put a space between "XFree" and "86". Indeed, it does work, and returns about 3525 results.

What is in common between XFree86 and iFriends?

[Anonymous Coward]

As others pointed out, searching for most things on NightSurf engine returns the same set of results. When searching for XFree86, result #3 always is:

3. Free Live Cams Looking for xfree86? I deliver, and I'm live right now

Searching for just about anything else, including "XFree85", #3 result is:

3. Free Live Cams Looking for iFriends? I deliver, and I'm live right now

It replaces X86Free with iFriends? I wonder.. Search msn.com for iFriends, and we get our favorite NightSurf warning!

Searching for iFriends on google returns www.ifriends.com, some sort of web-cam chatroom site, with many adult sponsored links.

The question is, what is the connection between xFree86 and iFriends? Could someone looking for adult web cams want to search for xfree86? I don't know.

Re:Mirror List

[gal1264]

try free and 86....what comes up first? Either it's really a mistake.....or they didn't try very hard....which sounds more like mister softie?