Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft's Bing Refuses Search Term "Sex" In India

Posted by timothy on from the back-to-spontaneous-generation dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently Microsoft is censoring search results for Bing in India and other countries. If you try to search for the term 'sex,' along with lots of variations, from India using Microsoft's new search engine, an error message is returned that says, 'the search sex may return sexually explicit content. To get results, change your search terms.' There's no preference setting or toggle-on-or-off choice; you simply cannot search for the term 'sex' in India if you are using Bing. While a user still can change their country and try the non-Indian version of Bing, this seems like an unnecessary step and unnecessary censorship on the part of Microsoft. Apparently Google has no problem with Indians searching for the term 'sex.'"

3 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. My office mate from India by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    used to say that gay people were not "a problem" in India, since no one there was really gay. But it was OK for men to hold hands in public.

  2. It's not just India... by ElKry · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There's an entire list of countries where the search returns that message, including germany:

    China
    Hong Kong
    Indonesia
    Malaysia
    Thailand
    Turkey
    And a lot of middle-east places, actually.

    A lots of those I can see how this could make some warped sense for religious/political reasons, but can someone clarify why Germany? What makes it special?

  3. Misspelling gets around it by Nakor+BlueRider · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I did a search for:

    se x

    And got all the results for 'sex'