Google is under fire for its opt-in porn filter. A new study says that it blocks a lot of non-porn sites.
Some of the URLs listed in the listings below might be construed as sexually-explicit — for example, for the purpose of providing information about health or sexual education, or describing efforts to regulate pornography. However, most of the URLs listed seem to be misclassified by Google as sexually explicit. For example, it is unlikely that there is sexually-explicit content on thomas.loc.gov (the Library of Congress’s index of federal legislation), pmo.gov.il (the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office), nmsa.org (the National Middle School Association), or neu.edu (the main index page of Northeastern University), but all four are excluded from Google searches using SafeSearch.
I’m a lot less upset about this than some other recent porn filter news, largely because the Google setting is an opt-in sort of thing. People have to turn it on explicitly (so to speak), and it reasonably tends to be overly protective in (through automation) blocking sites. I worry a lot more about when filtering is required by law than when it’s something voluntarily turned on — and while clearly there’s room for improvement in Google’s algorithms, better “safe” than “sorry,” if you really want to block out stuff from Little Johnny’s Eyes — though the report notes a number of false (or questionable) negatives, too.
(If you’re curious, the report includes a form where you can try your own site or search term to see if SafeSearch blocks it.)
The report does give kudos to Google for make it clear when SafeSearch is turned on.
Regardless, and despite Google’s press flacks, I think most folks would agree with the study’s conclusions:
SafeSearch’s errors confirm the author’s sense, reflected in prior research, that accurate Internet filtering is an extraordinarily difficult task still well beyond the reach of current algorithms and methods.