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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."

12 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Hrmmm by Narkov · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is the reverse possible? I.e. explicit content only??!! :)

    1. Re:Hrmmm by CarpetShark · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Use AdBlock to completely disable *.bing.com

      There, fixed that for you.

  2. good idea by ILongForDarkness · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I hate it when I type pretty much anything in for an image search in google and I end up with porn. Okay when I'm at home but when I'm at work ... not so cool.

    1. Re:good idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Chances are that both your boss and your coworkers know that the internet is full of porn and you cannot always avoid it. Unless of course they are one of those "think of the children" hypocrites ...

    2. Re:good idea by pbhj · · Score: 4, Insightful

      [...] 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.

      When are they going to be sued for copyright infringement then?

      It can't be long now surely. Everyone go and search bing for RIAA managed songs on video. Perhaps we can get these snakes to simultaneously eat each other??!

  3. I'm anal (and not in the fun way) so... by Starayo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Isn't that technically a subdomain?

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  4. Re: Details on MS products by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Come on gang, forget the snark below his post, this guy has a piece of the puzzle right! MS can lever the threat to "accidentally" label polka spotted portions of the web as "explicit" while daring the global web community to figure it out!

    While he's funny with the MS-product side, they can accept payments to label ANYTHING as explicit! Wheee!!

    --
    My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
  5. Surreal by berpi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Who's got the explicitometer to decide which domain to place content in? Censorship is getting increasingly surreal.

    1. Re:Surreal by ScentCone · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Censorship is getting increasingly surreal.

      Maybe it is, or maybe it isn't. But this thread had nothing to do with censorship. We're talking about a private web site run by a business. They are under absolutely no obligation to show, index, or communicate anything in a particular way. Serving the thumbnails off of a separate domain doesn't censor anything. It changes nothing unless you take some extra step yourself to block traffic coming from that domain. Regardless, it's not the government, there's no force involved... it's not censorship. People who use that word in this context are just displaying their ongoing ignorance of what censorship actually is, and their ignorance of the difference between a business tailoring what it delivers on its own web site and, say, China or Iran - where actual censorship (with consquences) is routine.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
  6. No Wonder MS Failed Once Again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    After the week of the usual standard Microsoft product marketing tactics:

    * Astroturfing by marketing companies hiring people to sit around all day posting "I'm a Google fan but gosh darn it! I've switched to Bing!" posts all over the Net

    * TV and other media spots

    * Getting all their MS friendly people in the computing media to hype the crap out of the rebranded old Microsft search product

    Microsoft's search engine plummeted right back down into irrelvancy in marketshare and all people are left talking about is "LOL! Bing is great for porn type posts and stories"

  7. Re:Several uses by HaZardman27 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Actually I don't see how this would make it any easier for said institutions and governments at all. Regardless of what Microsoft deems as explicit, bing is just one of many venues from which to obtain information and media on the internet. Also, big brother-ing people to protect them from thought-crime would only serve to further alienate users from the internet, and thus, their computers; how would this serve Microsoft's interests at all?

    --
    Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
  8. Doesn't really solve the problem... by chord.wav · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...if you search for "best loan insurance" and you get tons of broken images. Clever.