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He was thrilled, with page upon page of image search serps with his favorite dinosaur. He chose one, about 8 pages in, as his favorite, which now graces his pc as wallpaper. [url=www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/link/hist_10.html]t-rex[/url]
But the meaning of this post? New Googlers are being added to the ranks and it's exciting to see them discover it for the first time...
LisaB
LOL.
LisaB
But it makes me wonder how much I'd trust it. Havign seen what can jump you "out there" unsuspectingly, I wonder if I'd trust my own son there at that age (not got one yet though). I mean, supervised surfign is all nice and good, but I'Ve had things pop on my that, even while jumping for the close button left a scar on me.
Waht are your experiences while surfing with your smaller children? Has it ever been unpleasent or awkward in any way?
Just interested, as I seem to be getting to the age of worryign about that sort of thing ;)
SN
My sister was reseaching for a project she is doing at her new school. She need photos of various animals. She got kangaroo, chicken, dragon etc. It was all well and good until she needed a picture of a male hen, the proper word for which is of course "c o c k".
Innocent as she is, she searched google images for "c o c k" and you can imagine how disgusted & temporarily disturbed she was when she was presented with explicit pornographic images.
google's safesearch feature has severly let my sister down.
Who can I report this too?
thanks
mark
p.s. I added spaces to the word in question to make it unsearchable (for some reason).
p.p.s why does google archive the c h i l d. s e x newsgroup. Thats appauling!
I am sorry for what happened to your sister, I would hate to have that happen to one of my own...
But with all due respect, that is sort of a hard word to filter out for.
Websters might refer to the "C" word as a male Chicken, but the rest of the world might think of something else when they hear it spoken.
What use is safety filter when it doesn't work?
He mostly plays games (educational and entertainment) - try working with Spongebob cackling in the background...
In all seriousness, I do plan to teach him how to search - because I think it is a very important skill. He "gets" the whole internet thing, he's just not far enough along with reading and such to need it yet.
The whole internet/web thing is a tremendous parenting issue our parents didn't have to deal with - it's more than censorship and vetting what your kids see/do, simply because we are still early in the process of formulating rules to integrate the internet/web into our lives. (ok, so the folks here at WW are ahead of the curve :) but our kids will base their future actions on what they see us do now.)
LisaB
why can it not be made law for any adult content to be placed in .ad domains? Then parents can disable the .ad domain on their machine.
later
mark
I was curious (but not that curious) about your search so I tried it with the adult filter on. I did not get any pornagraphic results back at all. In fact - with the filter on, google returned no results and I was forced to search for the full term "cockeral"
Has anyone else tried this search with the filter on?
ugh!
Its not a cross-pond difference. That word has the same double-meaning over here..... but if you surround yourself with christian friends and don't watch filthy tv comedy, then such words regain their innocence.
Wouldn't google be all the more respected if it banned porn sites & pictures altogether?
Respected by whom? What about banning hate speech too? Or banning my protest sites?
I believe Google is respected because it does not ban any sites. It is not in the business of censorship. On second thoughts, Google will get more respect from me if it banned my competitors' sites because those contain nothing that is useful. ;)
If parents knew that google archived c h i l d p o r n I suspect they'd choose a dif. SE for their children.
Would they send their child to a library if they knew that the back room was used as a meeting place for local p'philes? I suspect not.
The analogy is not exact, but its not too far off.
mark
Google's integrity of search is their focus, and they attempt to have useful results appear first is their goal, regardless of who is searching, be it someone looking for sex sites or barnyard animals (or both for some folks apparently.) I know it seems appalling to yourself that it would be accessible to you, but you ARE actively searching, and if you don't word your query properly by narrowing your search you are going to get non-relevant results, be them offensive sites or just plain unrelated.
Honestly, you were asking for it searching for "cock". Not just for sex sites, but sites about pistols, people tilting their heads, etc... Granted the worst meaning was predominant, but the point is: broad queries return broad results, and you honestly have only yourself to blame until the day search engines learn to read your mind.
I do think they should not be caching the afore mentioned newsgroup, and you might want to drop them an email to point it out to them. They may not even be aware of it as I'm sure that is a more or less automated feature.
My suggestion is that you inform the federal authorities about these sites and newsgroups. Nobody wants such illegal sites.
Most sex sites, while geared towards adult audiences and many in bad taste and vulgar, are not illegal though.
"I think having your child use a different search engine is a great idea"
I don't have a child
"Google's integrity of search is their focus"
Agreed
" I know it seems appalling to yourself that it would be accessible to you"
Do you? I never said as much
"Honestly, you were asking for it searching for "cock".
I didn't search for that word. My sister did. She is a novice so naturally she just went to google and started searching. Moderate filter was on. should be ok then. If erect ****es are moderate search results, then someone needs a new yardstick.
"and you honestly have only yourself to blame until the day search engines learn to read your mind. "
Thats ridiculous. When moderate filter is on, I expect moderate results.
"I do think they should not be caching the afore mentioned newsgroup, and you might want to drop them an email to point it out to them. They may not even be aware of it as I'm sure that is a more or less automated feature."
Good call. I'll do that.
I had to straighten out some of those false assumptions there.
mark
I'm not sure about the filtering levels, I've never used them and I've never thought that the accuracy could be the best given the limits of technology to determine human context. Also, if the site is mostly graphics, that poses a roadblock as well. Additionaly, for whatever reason, webmasters of XXX sites tend to try to get around filters and spam results. It used to be far worse as I recall.
As to the scarring of children, that's a social issue really, but I can recall pre-internet days of kids in the school library looking up dirty words in the dictionary just to see if they're there. Same concept I suppose, though the dictionary definitions were decidedly less visual :)
From google's preferences page:
o Use strict filtering (Filter both explicit text and explicit images)
o Use moderate filtering (Filter explicit images only - default behavior)
o Do not filter my search results.
I'm afraid it failed.
An explicit list of results came up
I still assert that the animal is called a "rooster" and I can't really remember a time that I've heard anyone in normal recent conversations refer to them as a "cock", outside of "cock fighting" that is. :)
Incidentally, with strict filtering enabled, "rooster" returns 770,000 results and 23,000 very nice "male chicken" photos in the image search.
