Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Bing Refuses Search Term "Sex" In India
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.'"
... there is no sex in India's champagne room.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
there was pron.
Big Brother knows what's best for us. Now, sit down, shut up, and consume consume consume, work work work, buy buy buy.
A search for "sex" would return sexually explicit content? Duh. If you wanted to search for something that wasn't explicit, you wouldn't plug in the term "sex", would you?
Note: I was 13 when I wrote most of this. Take with several grains of salt.
Î'm i the only one who's searching for pron starts with the actual names of the pron stars?:)
There's no patch for stupidity
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.
Perhaps Microsoft doesn't want it's tech support searching for certain things while on the job?
Enjoy! -Excalibur
http://www.bing.com/search?q=win+xp+serial&go=&form=QBLH
It works great in the U.S.
No shit, Sherlock.
Keep digging Watson.
If their population, and the Kama Sutra, are any indication, the cat is definitely out of the bag! Why Microsoft would choose to limit this information is beyond me...
Google blocks searches for "Freedom" "Liberty" and other similar terms in China.
You Google fanboys really need to stop drinking the Kool-Aid(TM), Google is no better than Microsoft.
You can turn off Google's SafeSearch feature, you know...
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
it could be argued that there is a song about sex, "she bings" ... "she bings, she bings... I like the way she movze"... or something like that"
pardhon mye spehling,
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
It does stop you form searching for sex. Guess what, goatse gives the same result too! However you can search for:
allah is gay
gay
nigger
make bombs
bombing building
bme pain olympics
2 girls 1 cup
Strange that they didn't just set SafeSearch to strict by default, then let people disable it. I confirmed that doing this filters "sex" from search results.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Congratulations, Microsoft. You have just blocked one of the most popular topics on the internet, forcing people to use an other search engine. Google will love this decision ;-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
By several providers of 'content filter devices'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I agree. sex is just downright wrong and needs to be stopped at every turn. Otherwise our children might grow up thinking sex is okay.
The Indian government might have demanded it.. stranger things have happened.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Unfortunately, the general population is actually that stupid. Please be less subtle.
$ make available
Just last week reps from many dead-tree newspaper publishing companies in America got together at a conference to explore ways they could remain profitable in the face of blogs and other online news sources. The conclusions and statements they agreed on in the end prove out this fact: they are no longer interested in "journalism" (investigative reporting is almost completely dead). No, their main goal is 30% profit margins to ensure "shareholder value".
I suggest that the big search engines - all of them, you know who they are - are also intereted in maximizing profits, not providing "quality search results". That's why MS is censoring searches for "sex" in India, Google caved into the demands of the Chinese government a year ago (or more), possibly they all restrict searching for "Nazi" or "Hitler" in Europe.
They have to be politically the equivalent of non-offensive and milquetoast, or risk the loss of revenue and profits.
There's nothing inherently wrong or evil with those policies. I think it's important to realize what's going on, however, and the last thing these companies will ever do is admit to the truth. The truth goes against what they claim as their mission. At least with Microsoft, everyone on the face of the planet who deals with computers or programming to make a living knows they're a great big lying sack of shit. The masses do not.
--Greg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_India
Pornography is illegal in India. I assume the reason Microsoft bans the word "Sex" is ensure it is not sued as a pornography distributor.
Does "zzzz" get you sex?
Microsoft Spell Check Easter Eggs.
Seeing other people have sex or talk about it is depressing. Depression is a serious illness.
There's how many people in India? Over a billion? Maybe it should just redirect to "Did you mean to search for Birth Control?"
Have we considered that the Indian government forced this requirement on MS? MS isn't exactly known for sticking to their morals..on pretty much anyway, so why do we automatically assume it's their fault?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I'm guessing that even Sherlock wouldn't have blocked that request.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
"sexually transmitted diseases"?
"sexual abuse support groups"?
"sexual harassment statistics"?
"sex discrimination"?
"sex education"?
"safe sex"?
All blocked?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Same thing happens when you search from within Thailand.
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?
they sign on with all the entities that people don't like and don't trust.
Governments, big media, big corporate, you name it.
Give them all the nice terms they need to get what they get done, and in return they "prefer" the Microsoft solution. Stir in some clever bundling of products and services and you've got a base for windows leverage yet again.
Reeks of the same kind of thing that Vista is full of. ...and I could just be ranting too. Maybe they are stupid!
Blogging because I can...
From google trends searching for Sex:
Yeah I'd say google has absolutely no problem with people in India searching for "sex".
RTFM. With the emphasis on the F.
Aside from a few obvious cultural hooks (bing cherries, Bing Crosby, bing bang bong, etc.) from Advertising Psychology 101, I can't see the attraction. To be honest, I haven't even tried it. More net worth in Google, which is my librarian in the intertubes.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
wtf, who doesnt??
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
Google has some interesting stats on the term "sex"
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=sex&cmpt=q
A lot of Indian's seem to be posting here, sooo.... any single Indian females by any chance? :)
(Yup, I'm gonna be modded down to hell, I just know it, but you can't blame a guy for trying !)
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
... this is very dumb on Microsoft's side.
its not like its a highly overpopulated, poor country, right?
better to keep indians ignorant of sex, in case they were to learn it might not be a good idea to bring yet another mouth to feed into the world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If they don't like explicit content, then should filter the content, not the searches. I think it is possible to return informative web pages about sex.
I did a search for:
se x
And got all the results for 'sex'
XXX was invented for?
Seriously. Who searches for "sex"?
"two goats on fire, one cup"? Sure. "somethingsomething sex"? Yawn.
Give them a week, and they can't go back to Playboy level anyway.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
When in certain countries, you can't turn off the SS feature.
Some might say it's both pornographic and a significant piece of India's history.
Isn't India disrespecting a culturally relevant artifact by Microsoft disallowing such a search?
to make bing the "google that's safe for kids"?
In the US, their video search does pr0n a lot better than Google's does..
You win some you lose some.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
In TFA (yes, I'm a heretic, I read TFA) it says that you can see how it works by changing your country to "India" in the preferences. Maybe this censorship mechanism can be avoided just by cleverly setting the preferences.
Has anyone tried in India tried to change it to something else (like, belgium)? I'd like to know if it works.
GPG 0x1B479C78
There is a reason as to why Bing does such actions, and it is probably due to pornography being illegal in India and it not wanting to make any cases on it while Bing is still new.
Innovating Money Making Online http://www.mooladays.com
Well duhh. Microsoft's moving their workforce to India.
Microsoft learned their lesson with American employees browsing porn at work all day, they're just nipping the problem in the bud over in India.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
OMG! I never noticed that before - BING is a recursive acronym. Meaning Bing Is Not Google.
Yet another example of MS following the GNU project ;-)
My pics.
This is how companies undercut each other in countries that are ever so slightly inclined to mandate certain types of internet use. Now, India's government has every excuse (I'm not saying that they will, I'm just saying that they might be tempted to try) to mandate 'bing' over 'google' as a matter of law. Australia's recent history shows that this is not too over the top, and more than a billion people as your exclusive advertising audience is nothing the sneeze at. Just tempt the people in power. Ever so slightly.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
If their population, and the Kama Sutra, are any indication, the cat is definitely out of the bag! Why Microsoft would choose to limit this information is beyond me...
Well, they heard about how Apple had banned that app with the Kama Sutra on the iphone. So Microsoft, as usual, is just copying Apple once again.
Ironically, a search for "bing" brings up nothing but porn sites. "Horny young vixen gets a hard binging".
Property is theft.
If people could actually acquire porn and jack of at home, they would fuck much less. This way they can't satisfy them self with jerking of the net porn and have to fuck everything with 2 legs. I derive, that they plan on taking over the world by sheer number.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well... i have to grant you that without sex all of these things would indeed not exist.. :p
No 'karma' for 'sutra'
Will do, just make sure it is a stove which uses inductive heating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_cooker#Benefits
I guess one man's porn is another man's religion....
There are well-known Indian temples that explicitly show (with genitalia) sexual acts involving men & women, women & women, women & dogs, etc... These are revered in a religious/philosophical sense.
So how in the world can pornography be legally banned?
Carving in stone in religious places is fine, but ordinary picture and video is not?
I can only guess that the law must be splitting hairs to differentiate the two. To me (as an outsider), this isn't a question of XXX-video versus medical training information... It is more like ancient XXX versus modern-day XXX.
Seems like one could ascribe the religious/philosophical meaning behind the ancient templates to the modern day blue films and claim that the blue-films are a religious tool and not obscene...
[But I am probably an idiot. Someone else may have a much different take on what I am describing].
So indirectly the indian government did demand it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
considering all the flops they have made in the last 15 years, when will it be politically correct to rename them moronsoft?
there, fixed that for you. :)
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
Why on earth would anyone use bang in India anyway? (Or anywhere else for that matter).
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Microsoft Bing: 60% of the time, it works every time.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Microsoft's strategy lately has been to create a product, with the expectation that it will succeed big, but undermine it by using their product as a way to enforce the will of some authority (rightly or not) against the consumer's will.
Remember the Zune and "Music the way it wants to be", which would enforce DRM on even freely downloaded songs when sharing them with other users? They never did figure out that "music the way you want it to be" would be a better selling point.
Your suppose to use BLING to search for sex.. not bing.. sheesh !
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
As much as i'm normally all for microshaft bashing. In this case from what i've read, the problem is that under Indian law if bing returns anything even broadly suggestive, then MS gets sued and charged for "purveying or enabling". Bloody ridiculous I know, but not their fault. Easier to simply obey the laws of the country in question for them then to court MORE negative publicity or being blacklisted by the indian government, which is going to hurt market share one way or another. Besides, different culture, different rules. I'd be interested to hear what the Indian on the street thinks.
As in; I was searching for 'microsoft sucks" and got "Binged"
With a population of 1.15 billion and rising, I'm guessing Indians may know a thing or two about sex already
Now the search results in bing site for sex does return results ( guys in Bing ) Read Slashdot thats great !!!!!!!!!!!