FC: Google's porn filters block many innocuous sites

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Thu Apr 10 2003 - 13:44:27 PDT

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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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