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Fwd: FC: Google's porn filters block many innocuous sites
This is a forwarded message
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: politech@politechbot.com
Date: Thursday, April 10, 2003, 10:44:27 PM
Subject: FC: Google's porn filters block many innocuous sites
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The report:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/google-safesearch/
---
http://news.com.com/2100-1032-996417.html
Report criticizes Google's porn filters
By Declan McCullagh
April 10, 2003, 8:18 PM PT
WASHINGTON--Children using Google's SafeSearch feature, designed to
filter out links to Web sites with adult content, may be shielded from
far more than their parents ever intended.
A report released this week by the Harvard Law School's Berkman Center
for Internet & Society says that SafeSearch excludes many innocuous
Web pages from search-result listings, including ones created by the
White House, IBM, the American Library Association and clothing
company Liz Claiborne.
The omissions occur because of the way Google designed the feature,
which can be enabled or disabled through a preferences page. The
feature uses a proprietary algorithm that automatically analyzes the
pages and makes an educated guess, without intervention by Google
employees.
That technique reduces the cost of the SafeSearch service, but it can
lead to odd results. It's perhaps unlikely that many humans would have
classified a BBC News report on East Timor, Mattel's site about its
Scrabble game -- the URL includes the word "adults"--or the Nashville
Public Library's teen health issues page as unsuitable for minors.
Some articles from CNET News.com and CNET Software are also invisible
to SafeSearch users.
[...]
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