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Bing Gets Porn Domain To Filter Explicit Content
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."
Anyone realise how easy this makes it for Governments/Institutions to protect you from thoughtcrime? I'd wager that is actually Microsofts main intended user, not individuals/concerned parents. Microsoft: the only halfway innovative technologies they ever come up with are tools of repression.
Well for example a slashdot post explaining in explicit detail why a MS product is crap will be automatically filtered as explicit content.
Or for example, they really want to do business in China so they label anything "free Tibet" explicit, etc etc.ÂIt is a good idea in the sense that it can give better control of what goes over your network. But it is very open to abuse.
how to block adult web sites, the non Microsoft way. Of course this doesn't deserve a whole article on slashdot .. :)
Well, laugh all you want, but where I work (our company does search.... kinda...) we have this position :) At least some sort of it.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Exactly. There is no difference between "heavy filtering of results" and results that are explicit coming from a separate domain. All that means is that it makes it easier on your end to filter the explicit.bing.com. Who decides what is explicit? Microsoft. What if you don't agree with them? What if you are the owner of that content? Is there a resolution process? Do you have to sue them? Can you sue them?
My blog
try typing linux into bing... after 'linu' it will give the following suggestions:
...
...
linux
linux windows
linux microsoft
linux vista
linux commands
while google suggests:
linuxtoday
linux
linux commands
linux mint
linux download
Already seems a little jaded.
You can either filter on a sophisticated ruleset te detect what you describe, or you can block one host in one domain (the same domain of 'bing.com', just a different host record within it....)
It's good that google accommodated the need, but just because Google did it one way and MS did it another that Google's way must be better (by better, this would mean easier).
It would help to have the flaws in MS's approach actually described and how Google's overcomes it.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It would be funny if the following worked, but alas, it produces no results:
http://images.google.com/images?q=site:explicit.bing.net