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Bing Gets Porn Domain To Filter Explicit Content

Posted by kdawson on from the still-no-sex-in-india dept.

sopssa writes "Bing has set up a separate domain just for porn images and videos. '[The] general manager of Microsoft Bing said in a blog post that potentially explicit images and video content now will be coming from one separate domain — explicit.bing.net. 'This is invisible to the end customer, but allows for filtering of that content by domain which makes it much easier for customers at all levels to block this content regardless of what the SafeSearch settings might be.' When Bing was first launched, there was some online chatter about explicit images popping up when videos were 'previewed' in the search results. This means the thumbnails and videos are served from that domain, allowing easy filter of them in corporate and school networks. Users still normally use www.bing.com. Instead of heavily filtering the results, this is quite a good move."

15 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. just use booble by lecithin · · Score: 4, Informative

    go to booble.com

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    1. Re:just use booble by _merlin · · Score: 4, Informative

      On your advice, I just tried booble. I have to say, it's complete rubbish. For each search I tried, all the hits on the first page were advertising, and none of them were even advertising anything remotely related to what I searched for. If you're using a search engine, you want relevant results - not just random advertising.

  2. Re:How does Microsoft define what is 'explicit'? by l2718 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The easiest way is using the "keywords" META tag which I'm sure is used by most explicit sites to self-identify. The problem of determining the semantic content of a site (not to speak of interpreting images) is hard, but "Safe searches" of various kinds have been around for a long time so I'm sure there's been some progress on the text processing side. I doubt computer vision has reached the stage when it's easy to identify a nude.

  3. Google already came up with a better way by tumbleweedsi · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google just make sure they let the filtering people know how to categorise the pages based on if Safesearch is on or off. On my filter I can choose to block google images entirely or just when safesearch is off and that works just fine without needing another domain name.

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    1. Re:Google already came up with a better way by Aladrin · · Score: 4, Informative

      That works great for individual users. This is -not- meant for individuals. This is meant for companies, schools, etc. You can block that domain at your firewall/proxy/dns/whatever and make -sure- none of your users see it, no matter what settings they choose.

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    2. Re:Google already came up with a better way by tumbleweedsi · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sorry, I wasn't being clear. My network proxy which I run on the network of an enterprise storage company allows me to block pages when safesearch is off. That means that the users can do whatever they like in google images but as soon as they turn off the safe search the results pages are blocked until they turn it back on. I know there are a lot of the "mom's basement" sorts around on slashdot but please don't assume I am one of them.

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  4. Re:good idea by SpinyNorman · · Score: 4, Informative

    This Bing change won't help with that.

    I don't expect that the image or video results you get with Bing vs Google at any preferred level of "safe search" filtering are much different, and that's not going to change with this announcement.

    All the Bing change does, rather belatedly, is stop overriding parental controls (Open DNS, Net Nanny, etc) that would block porn domains. What happens up until now is that Bing self-hosts all it's image/video thumbnails from it's own servers - porn included - and starts to play these thumbnail videos automatically - direct from Microsoft's servers - when you mouseover them. Since the videos are coming from a Microsoft domain rather than a porn domain, parental porn filters are bypassed.

    All the Bing change does is to move Microsoft's porn video reviews from bing.com to microsofts-hard-core-porn-server.bing.com so that Open DNS, Net Nanny, etc can once again be used to block this stuff.

  5. Re:Hrmmm by _merlin · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just tried it - explicit.bing.com gives you SFW and NSFW - using that domain is just like saying "switch off safe search". AFAICT, there's no "unsafe search" option.

  6. Re:Hrmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well, there is already PornTube, PornoTube, YouPorn, RedTube, XTube, etc etc...

    (shamefully posting as AC)

  7. Re:good idea by SpinyNorman · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yep - this is just the thumbnails on the Bing search results page.

  8. As a net admin for a school.... by jimbo-nally · · Score: 4, Informative

    I have to say that this is really nice. I just added explicit.bing.net to the list of filtered content in our SonicWall and then did an images search for breasts on bing.com with safe-search off and the images that displayed were not what I would consider porn. Many of the images, if not most, were not displayed. I will feel much better about allowing access to bing.com for our students now. Can't believe I'm saying this...but "Good job, Microsoft!"

  9. Re:Hrmmm by _merlin · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's one of those for Google here.

  10. Re:good idea by secondhand_Buddah · · Score: 3, Informative

    Um, turn safe search on.

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  11. It's a lie; it doesn't work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I put Bing to the test. First search term, "grossao". It found the Grossao stories (erotica), plus a whole lot more that's pornographic at best, illegal at worst. It found zoophilia, for goodness sake!

    Bing certainly has to be my search engine of choice for when I'm feeling horny! lol.

  12. Re:One hell of a statement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    sig in sig field, dippy. Who wants to read "j" after every one of your posts? No one.