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MSN Search Blocking Results For XFree86?
Peacefire writes "Thomas Shaddack spotted this on http://www.root.cz/ (in Czech) -- if you go to http://search.msn.com/ and
search for 'XFree86', it tells you that you've 'entered a search term that is likely to return adult content', and directs you to the porn search engine NightSurf.com, which lists a bunch of porn sites that ostensibly match the term 'XFree86'. If you search for 'XFree86' on Google, however, it's clear that the top matching terms returned by a normal search, are XFree86 sites, are not a bunch of porn sites. MSN is apparently blocking the specific term 'XFree86' and not just filtering on something stupid like the 'X' or the 'Free', since you can search for 'XFree85' and 'XFree87' with no problem. And search terms like 'Linux', 'AOL' and 'Macintosh' are allowed, so at least MSN hasn't simply blacklisted all competitors' keywords as 'porn', but why would they be blocking 'XFree86'?"
Of course the fact that such mistakes can be made, and left undiscovered for so long, speaks against closed blicklists like MSN's.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
The point, I think, is that the only way people are going to know it is doing stuff like this (and thus, be able to make an educated decision) is if stuff like this is public.
I mean, if Google was blocking all search results for Linux-related sites, wouldn't you want to know? Especially if you already know the Linux sites, and thus don't search for their existence (if not content) on a regular basis.
Not that I believe that Google is really doing their service out of the goodness from their hearts - they're doing it to make money.
But people wonder why I don't want to see a Micorosft Internet Search built into Windows (oh, and made so you can't remove it without damaging the operating system, like you can't remove IE or Media Player or anything else Microsoft decides is essential).
Call me crazy, but MS seems to have this weird habit of shutting down things they don't like. Is this just a stupid mistake? It could be - I mean, block things starting with X to keep kids from porn, right?
Oops - but Xfree85 works, so that can't be it.
MS gives away IE to shut down Netscape. That wasn't the crime that I thought was terrible - it was going to their OEM partners and threatening them with extra high cost of Windows if they put on Netscape.
So if they should take over the search world, can we really trust it to reflect accurately? I'm all for giving something a fair shake, but if before the game really starts they're already blocking alternate product possibilities I think "trust" is something that won't apply to MSN search.
Of course, I could be wrong. Could just be a simple misunderstanding.
Sadly, even if it is, based on their past history, I don't think I could believe that's it.
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Because lots of porn deals with 18 year olds, and the birthdate of someone 18 this year is 1986 that could be one, possible, if very far afield theory.
Notice that a search for "X Free 86" returns xfree.org, the XFree86 website, as its first hit.
If you think about it, it's unlikely their adult filter is catches pornographic searches by the query text alone. I can think of any number of queries which would give porn but which it would be difficult to computationally distinguish from non-pornographic queries.
My guess is that MSN performs the search in any case, probes the first hits in their cache with some porn-detection algorithm, and redirects you if the algorithm thinks it might be porn.
This would suggest that, for whatever reason, the first few hits for XFree86 (as opposed to "X Free 86" or XFree85") pass the porno test.
On the other hand, the notice says "You have entered a search term that is likely to return adult content" which suggests strongly that only the query is being studied. So I don't know.
Anyway, I'd be more inclined to think it's a crappy test than to think they've explicitly coded this as some incredibly obscure means of spiting XFree86.
I think we're overthinking this. This could be a subtle way for Microsoft to block information about OSS, but I think it's because their search engine kinda sucks. Isn't it more likely that we're so used to engines like 'google' and 'alltheweb' that we assume that Microsoft must be up to something. Now, I don't believe that this would be beyond their scruples, just that this seems like a screwup. Anyway, how many of us use msn.com anyway? Try hitting 'alt-home' and you'll get my point.
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The simple, conspiracy-free answer to this riddle is that MSN just has a crappy search engine that DOES return porn sites when you search for XFree86.
Never assign to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity....
If you have reached a level of cluefulness where you need to find information on Xfree86 then you are using Google as well.
Not necessarily.
If you start out as an MS user and hear about this other operating system, what is the first thing you need to do to BECOME clueful? Look it up. Right?
So you look it up, using the tool you know. And the tool refuses, and tells you it's something pornographic.
So you decide somebody's playing a joke on you and forget about it.
And you never DO become cluefull enough to download it and try it out.
And thus you never wean yourself from MSware.
And you keep buying upgrades from MS.
Multiply by millions.
Multiply by hundreds of bucks each.
Sounds like a GREAT marketing ploy.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Paranoids,
Blocking XFree86 is not an indication of concious effort by Microsoft to divert traffic. Perhaps their blocking software has the following algorithm:
For terms that have been searched for more than 10,000 times, block the term if the first letter is X and the second letter is a consonant.
As you can see, this search doesn't consciously target XFree86. And XFree85 and XFree87 probably wouldn't meet the 10,000 criteria.
Wouldn't you think that anyone who knows what XFree86 is would not be detered by MSN anyway?
This is non-news. Hey everybody, the dots on acoustical tile above my cube spell out "Microsoft rules!" oh no!!!
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Gotta ask... could this have been the result of enough adult sites trying to trick MSN's spider. Afterall, Google as a company doesn't exactly have a political stand on George W. Bush, but it was webmasters who got the "Miserable Failure" association made...
Because they're aware of its existence, but don't know anything about it. Just because you've heard of an open source project doesn't mean you are a Linux nut. People who are SEARCHING for XFree86 rather than just going to XFree86.org are more likely to be searching on MSN than a "better" search engine due to the fact that they're not savvy.
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This is nitpicking but interestingly if you search for Y Windows Y MSN Gives you this and Google Gives you this. Google finds it without problems.
I've tried a few other terms like Microsoft loses lawsuit and they don't seem to be filtering results. Interestingly searching for Microsoft Warez IS being manipulated pointing to microsoft.com/piracy. Don't blame them. Just interesting to compare the results with other search engines.
While I can possibly see this as some form of censorship, especially when searching for Xfee86, what I'd like to know is what other terms they have manipulated which might be interpreted as a conflict of interest. What would happen if the US government had a Goolge like search engine - what kind of censorship would occur on their site? At what point will NBC (of MSNBC) become involved - if ever - to filter out searches whose results are not in their favor. Does CNN, the BBC the CBC and other media do the same thing on Internet searches on their websites?
Please make up a theory why "XFree86" gets the porn warning, but "XFree86 sex" doesn't.
Oh, yeah, now gasgesgos will say that Porn sites plaster "XFree86" all over, but never use the word "sex"...
I suspect it's probably a bug instead of malicious intent...
Actually, rather than a bug, I suspect that it's probably human error. Because the search engine only seems to match certain words as likely to return "adult" material, there's probably a human-generated list of terms. My guess is that they took a list of the top 1000 (or something) search terms, and assigned somebody to classify them as adult or not-adult. If the person was unfamiliar with XFree86, they may very well have guessed that it was related to porn (X and Free together).
In other words, the only thing I think Microsoft is guilty of here is creating a remarkably poor filter.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?