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[FYI] (Fwd) Fwd: FC: Google's porn filters block many innocuous sites
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Date sent: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 23:16:54 +0200
From: Joerg-Olaf Schaefers <listen@fx3.de>
Organization: fx3 media
To: debate@lists.fitug.de
Subject: Fwd: FC: Google's porn filters block many innocuous sites
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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
______________________________________________________________________
The report:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/google-safesearch/
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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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