Googling child porn will now get you warnings instead of pictures

[Baitball Blogger]

Google has announced new methods to combat child pornography on the web, including removing the material from its search results and showing warnings to the users who search for the obscene material.

The search giant's Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt took to the Daily Mail to explain Google's newly launched efforts.

An algorithm has been developed to prevent relevant results from being displayed when a user searches for child pornography. If someone searches for one of the more than 13,000 terms Google has deemed related to child pornography, the user will see a banner warning them of the dangers of sexually exploiting children and directing him or her to a facility that can help, according to Schmidt's statement.

Removing the harmful images from the web is much more tedious, which is why Google has hired an additional 200 people to help with the task.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/blogs/gone-viral/os-google-child-porn-11182013,0,2454744.post

[Cooley Hurd]

1. GOOD!!!!!

[JaneyVee]

2. Great!

[Ian David]

3. This is great news, but I'm not going to test it to see if it works. n/t

[Jackpine Radical]

7. I just tried it. I typed Seto child porn.

If anybody ever Spotlight-searches the hard drives on my various Macs, they will find hundreds of hits on "child porn." Of course not one of them has any pics or vids in it, just copies of virtually every scientific article written on the topic in the past 30 years.


Oh--Michael Seto is a Canadian researcher who is maybe North America's foremost expert on child porn offenders.

[Ian David]

20. So, does Google also block searches for scientific article on child porn? n/t

[Jackpine Radical]

23. No.

But then, I have access to most of the journals & specialized search engines in the field & don't actually Google the topics much. (Occasionally Google Scholar.)

[longship]

4. As with all pr0n, it most likely will get you a computer virus, if one clicks through.

But that's not a sufficient penalty for child pr0n users.

[hobbit709]

24. a recent article showed 4 of the top 10 virus sites were fundy religious ones

Only one porn site was in the top ten.

[riqster]

5. Awesome news.

[LuvNewcastle]

6. I'm surprised there wasn't something like that already.

I'm sure a lot of the results for the searches are bait put out by the FBI, though. This is good, but I'm a little concerned about what this might lead to if we're not careful. What if the FBI starts giving out lists of terms for Google to ban searches for in the future? We need to be watchful about what we allow them to stop is all I'm saying. Is there an internet watchdog group that pays attention to government interference on the web? Seems like it would be a good idea to have one.

[KamaAina]

9. Electronic Frontiers Foundation is one

there's also one called, I think, EPIC.

[LuvNewcastle]

10. Thanks, I'll check them out.

[Blue_Tires]

8. I'm surprised any pederasts would use something as traceable as google

I thought almost all of them were on the so-called "dark" internet??

[Orrex]

11. That was my thought as well!

It would be like trying to by crack directly from the mayor.

[Journeyman]

12. So what are the 13,000 search terms related to child porn? . . .

And how can anyone conceivably make it through a day without using one or more of them?

[loli phabay]

13. better idea is activate web cam take pic then direct them to call a number

Where they can explain how it happened. Said half in jest.

[liberalhistorian]

14. I not only have no problem with this whatsoever,

I say that it is more than about time. There is no reason at all for anyone to ever be googling child porn unless you're a prosecutor or defense attorney involved in a case or it's a matter of legitimate legal/academic/social science research. Period.

[Hekate]

15. Excellent, and past due.

Now if only Yahoo would do something similar. At one point several years ago I got floods of pornographic spam with purported Yahoo addresses. I never opened the damn things but the subject lines alone were enough to make me sick, because a large proportion of it was very explicit invitations to view kiddie porn.

After seeking out the Yahoo customer service link I complained, and was informed rather huffily that it didn't route through them because they took their domain's reputation seriously. My instructions were to provide them with the real origins, and two computer professionals I asked were unable to crack that to their satisfaction. The shit kept pouring in, so I started forwarding it directly to my contact at Yahoo. Shortly after that they cut me off and refused to take my mail anymore.

I finally got relief with an excellent spam filter, and to this day I have no idea if Yahoo ever took the subject seriously.

[onehandle]

16. PR stunt. 'Googling' is not how people find child pornography. nt

[Jerry442]

17. This would be a great idea if...

1. There were an infallible way to flag content as child porn.

2. We all agreed on what is and is not child porn.

3. The gatekeepers were all people who shared our values.

4. The mechanisms of censorship would never be turned on other content.

As I see it, exactly none of those things is likely to be true.

[JPZenger]

18. They need to arrest the guys who apply for the 200 jobs to search for child porn all day

That would be the ultimate depressant - to spend your entire work day searching for child porn. Maybe this is a trick to see which guys apply for those jobs, so the police can investigate them.

[Sissyk]

19. This is a good thing!

Thanks, google!

[AverageJoe90]

21. This was LONG overdue. nt

[hrmjustin]

22. I hope it helps.