Censorware Failure: Kiddle's "Child-Safe" Search Engine (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In a bid to protect young internet users from inappropriate content, a new visual search engine designed for children has launched this week. Kiddle.co filters its results so that only 'safe' sites are displayed and page descriptions are written in simple language. It also claims to get rid of indecent images and 'bad words.' However, tests have revealed that the odd risque image will still slip by into the listings. The words 'gay' and 'lesbian' have also controversially been removed from the 'child-friendly' platform. Other reports claimed that references to killing rabbits, naked images of Vanessa Hudgens and Khloe Kardashian's sex tape had initially slipped into the results. While Kiddle, based in the U.S. and the Netherlands, is a separate and unrelated venture to Google, the system uses the web giant's safe search mode in addition to its own team of human editors to pick out the unsuitable content.

Comments

Name change please

[Anonymous Coward]

'Kiddle' is waay too close to 'Diddle', which is what my Uncle used to call our secret happy fun play time.

heh. Captcha 'explore'

Re:Name change please

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking the same thing.

Re:Name change please

[Dr_Barnowl]

Yeah, I thought it sounded like a shorternym for "Kiddy Fiddle"

censor this

[Anonymous Coward]

8====D~~~~

Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

Why has everything to go the SJW direction?

Why should the removal of words such as "Gay" and/or "Lesbian" be deemed 'controversial'??

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe there should be a special Internet (like AOL, perhaps) for Mormons, Muslims, and other religious fuck-tards because apparently the real world is too scarey for them.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[sumdumass]

This is geared towards kids. Please tell me what neccesity is there for kids to be exposed to sexual preferences before they are even sexually aware?

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about sexual preference, it's about relationship preference. Very simple: some men grow up and end up marrying men, and some women grow up and marry other women. No one's asking they be taught about scissoring or anal.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the SJWs say kids are aware enough to decide to get a sex change.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to the pervasive hetero-normative themes rampant in Walt Disney's social programming films.

I'm a straight supporter of the gamer gate/men's rights movements. I just don't think treating the queer minority as deviants deserving of social revulsion is a healthy form of bigotry for society to be accepting. Can't we stick to the classics like vilifying homeless people and the mentally ill?

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[jaa101]

It just says it's for "kids" with no definition about appropriate age ranges or its censorship standards that I could find. Depending on how you define "kids," some of them could easily be sexually aware. If they only intend it for use by the very young then removing all references to sexuality would seem uncontroversial but it would be better for Kiddle to give clearer guidelines about this.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Your.Master]

That's just such a backwards way of thinking about things. They don't filter out the word mortgage just because kids aren't taking out mortgages and aren't really financially aware. It's especially odd since songs children typically know, like many christmas songs, include the word "gay" in its non-sexuality context, so you're way more likely to false positive on gay.

The onus is on the one doing the filtering to describe why their filter makes sense in achieving their goals. If they were generating a whitelist, then you could reasonably ask why they should put gay and lesbian on the allow-list, but this appears to be a blacklist approach, or at best a weighted approach with a large negative value on those words.

There are a couple obvious directions they can take:

1. We don't want to expose our children to the idea of same-sex attraction.
2. Lesbian and gay, as used in practice on the Internet, are strongly correlated with things they do think are child-inappropriate, like perhaps hostile trolling or actual pornography or what-have-you.

If you take the second route, then you have to describe why they think those things are child-inappropriate. Eventually you'll come down to a series of principles that you agree with or don't, in whole or in part.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Mirar]

Well, it does explain it if you search for it:

"You have entered an LGBT related search query. Please realize that while Kiddle has nothing against the LGBT community, it's hard to guarantee the safety of all the search results for such queries. We recommend that you talk to your parent or guardian about such topics."

Ie, the search term leads to too much porn to be able to filter out.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[righteousness]

As far as I'm concerned, once you're sexually aware, you're no longer a "kid".

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

Mainly, the fact that 'gay' is a perfectly ordinary English word...

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Maritz]

Tell it to the judge.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

Blocking tools like this are targeted more on overly conservative chrisians then overly liberal permissive types. That is just marked. Liberal permissive type is less likely to want to use it while overly conservative parent may see it as absolute necessity. They are excluding content their users are likely to find objectionable - and many people find homosexuality objectionable and its existence off-putting. Blocking content like that is just market force in play.

You may disagree, you may find them backward, but they do exist and are be disproportionally likely to use blocker like this.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[sumdumass]

So if innocently some men marry men an so on, why does it need to be labeled for children? It would seem to me that if it is natural, presenting it as natural instead of labeling it would be the proper form of presentation.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

Because marriage is unnatural?

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

If they've already caught the LGBT search term, then why not return a restricted set of whitelisted sites instead?

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[digitig]

Well, "Gay" used to be a fairly common given name, it's still a fairly common family name, and if the kids are old enough to be looking at classic texts they'll still see it used a lot to mean "happy" (kids are unlikely to be searching texts old enough to encounter earlier meanings). So even if you want to shelter them from the real world, filtering "gay" gives far too many false positives. "Lesbian" is going to give fewer false positives, but it is the correct adjective to describe a native of the island of Lesbos.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Minupla]

I can agree with this, remove the label and have it divided into 'sexually explicit' and not and I have no issues with it, so long as that's the line.

Sadly, I suspect it's really an attempt to filter gay/lesbian relationships from reality, which I do have an issue with.

My kid is being taught in school at gr 2 that some families have 2 mommys and some have 2 daddys, and I have no problem with it. I wouldn't want her to use a search engine that was less open then her school.

Min

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

This is geared towards kids. Please tell me what neccesity is there for kids to be exposed to sexual preferences before they are even sexually aware?

Because there is a social engineering agenda to make homosexual attractions appear normal. It's why, on agenda-driven shows or similar where they display same-sex couples, they give equal or more screen time to the same-sex relationships as they do to the heterosexual relationships. While same-sex attraction occurs in roughly 3-5 out of 100 humans, an agenda-driven show will display it as 50 (or more) out of 100 humans.

This "outrage" is simply more of the same - a sliver of the population wants to be presented as normal. A good first step in normalising this is presenting children with the perception that it occurs in around half the population (or more). That is why there is outrage - not because of moralising (which isn't happening in this case), but because they are treated, in searches, as outliers.

(Posting anon because you never know when the groupthink with modpoints squad show up, nevermind that I never present my own opinion on the matter. Pointing out that same-sex attraction individuals are statistical outliers got me mod-bombed before. I was castigated for not calling them "normal" and calling them outliers.)

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[peragrin]

How do you explain it to your kids when they see two women kiss at a public restaurant.

I had to explain to my 6 year old niece why she only has one aunt because her other 3 uncles are not married yet(my self included) Just this past weekend.

My god daughter asked about men wearing skirts, and her mother said men don't wear skirts. Except a couple of months earlier they were at a Renaissance fair with men wearing kilts.

Children are 100 times more observant than adults. They notice a lot but it sometimes takes them a couple of months to ask the questions relating to that observation.

Lastly just because something is natural doesn't mean it doesn't have a label. after all do you label a man and woman getting together with the word marriage? yes yes you do.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[AmiMoJo]

Unfortunately that's the exact excuse often used to block the discussion of LGBT issue. The exact claim varies, sometimes it's "it will be too confusing for children" and sometimes it's "we can't separate out the sexual aspects", but it all basically boils down to claiming that because there is effort involved it must be censored. Straight relationships require no effort to describe because they are "normal".

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[dave420]

Because they are exposed to sexual preferences every single day (their parents, family members, etc.), and that can lead a child to think that is the entirety of the spectrum of human sexual preferences. As it is, people can get screwed over by other people's perceptions of their sexuality, especially by those who are under the impression it is deviant or abnormal, which one would be more likely to be should they not be exposed to the big picture during their formative years.

Would you ask this question if they arbitrarily blocked pictures of people with blond hair, or would you see the nonsense then?

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[goose-incarnated]

Would you ask this question if they arbitrarily blocked pictures of people with blond hair, or would you see the nonsense then?

False equivalence; blond-haired people aren't 3%-4% of the population. When something is a statistical outlier, then guess what - it *isn't* normal, it's an outlier, same as people with less than 70 IQ points, or more than 150 IQ points, or people in the 96th percentile for shoe-size, etc.

After all, we don't teach kids that sociopaths are normal, and *those* people are greater than 10% of the population. How about criminals? You want to propagate the idea that being a criminal is normal because they make up more than 20% of a population? Violent criminals are something like 12% of the population, you want to go around calling those people normal?

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[sumdumass]

Is it? What I'm asking is if it is natural then why does it need to be labeled a special kind of marriage.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[thesandtiger]

You think kids aren't exposed to sexual preferences all the time?

"Oh, so cute - you're 3 years old and playing with Molly; is she your girlfriend?"

"Timmy only pulled your hair because he likes you! You're gonna marry him someday!"

Parents or partners kissing or showing physical affection in front of their kids. Literally everything in mainstream media. Kids are bombarded with this stuff from the get-go; it's only when it's not heteronormative that people seem to have a problem with it.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no point in specifying "gay" unless sex is in some way involved. Who you grow up to marry is very much connected to who you are involved in sexual activity with.

BDSM; BDSM doesn't have to involve sex. Its not a lifestyle choice most people make, they simply are. Is it equally bad that children can't learn about the soft, supportive underbelly of larger BDSM communities? Maybe help little Suzie understand why she likes to play Rope-bound Barbie and Hunting Knife Ken? No? Yeah, but I'm sure the gay thing is different.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[wisnoskij]

No, those words are very explicitly about sexual preference. They are words about what a person prefers in the bedroom and are inherently sexual in nature.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[KGIII]

> How do you explain it to your kids when they see two women kiss at a public restaurant.

explain it to the kids? i run over and start stuffing dollar bills down their shirts

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[KGIII]

At some point, you just have to laugh at what we humans have become. We're a bunch of overly sensitive, protectionist, worrywarts. Kids aren't that fragile. My kids, as an indicator, grew up to be healthy and fairly normal. No, no I have no idea why - or how. But they're well-rounded, productive, and generally kind. If a kid sees or hears about BDSM, or homosexuality, they'll still make their own choices.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[sumdumass]

How about just treating them like humans and skip the labels so eventually there is no more difference than us or your parents or your neighbors or whatever else is normal? Why do we have to label when it comes to children? I think that just teaches them something is different - not normal.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[KGIII]

I am not sure but I think I understand their perspective. You said it right in your post - "normative." They probably want normal kids.

No, no I'm not trolling. I just suspect that's their view. It doesn't even need to be religion that prompts it, just stupidity.

Why stupidity? Well, you can't beat (or pray) the gay away. If they're gay then, well... There's fuck all you can do to stop it. Even if you kill 'em, you'll just have a dead and gay offspring. You might as well do the smart thing and accept it and love 'em for who they are.

And no... Nobody turns anyone gay. They might convince you to have sex with them but that doesn't mean they're gay.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[omnichad]

pervasive hetero-normative themes

Isn't hetero-normality pretty pervasive in itself? To be honest, Hollywood as a whole is overdoing it with the inclusiveness to the point that it subverts reality.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Flavianoep]

Because, as yet, nobody noted that 'heterosexuality' is also listed as a 'bad word'.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I went to middle school, parent's bigotry infested student minds(with their children being the carriers in to the larger population).

Competition for mates and political power-struggles manufacture division where none should exist. Demonizing minorities has always been a strategy used to nurture an "us vs them" culture. Subjecting bigots to the ridicule they would otherwise inflict is the most effective strategy for getting everyone equal treatment. When people are equally afraid of saying "fag" as they are afraid of saying "nigger": that's progress.

If you disagree that's fine, but I suspect you're a vocally outspoken individual with extreme views rather than a truly representative sample of your interest group.

Kids these days take "equality" for granted. When we "skipped the labels" and didn't force people to look at imagery of homosexuals displaying affection in public: that was the environment that gave us "The Matthew Shepard Story". Nobody wants to feel different, and media depictions of homosexuality as a normal everyday thing are the best way to achieve that.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

If 90% of the country is straight and you are going to buy the script for a romantic comedy do you buy the rights to the script about a heterosexual couple or the one about the gay couple? Which script will maximize ticket sales? It's easy to get a scenario where the majority of a population is over-represented in media as a result of ROI analysis when targeting investments. If Hollywood is "overdoing" anything, it's more likely a response to a saturated market for heterosexual focused movies than them deciding they care more about cultural engineering than they care about profits.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[dfghjk]

"How do you explain it to your kids when they see two women kiss at a public restaurant."

How do you explain it when they see a man and woman kissing? Do it the same way, no need for a double standard.

"Lastly just because something is natural doesn't mean it doesn't have a label."

Way to deliberate misrepresent the issue. Of course things have names, it's not a question of having a word for something, it's a question of labeling it as unsuitable for children.

Kids get exposed to sexual preferences and behavior all the time and not only is it accepted, it is deliberate. It is only considered OK because it it conventional.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[thesandtiger]

I agree that this is probably their reasoning, and yes, it's extremely fucking stupid, with potentially tragic consequences. All too often people equate "typical" with "normal" and "normal" with "good" and it's pretty dumb.

Maybe I'm weird, but what I want is for my kids to be healthy, happy, kind and capable. Who they love, as long as it's consensual and doesn't interfere with their health, happiness, kindness and capabilities, is fine by me.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should the removal of words such as "Gay" and/or "Lesbian" be deemed 'controversial'??

Why should the removal of passages from the Christian bible be deemed "controversial"??

You (probably) think that allowing search results to include passages from the Christian bible is ok. For the sake of argument, I do not.
I think that allowing search results to include words such as "Gay" and/or "Lesbian" is ok. You obviously do not.

And that is why it is controversial, because we cannot agree on what "child-safe" means.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[thesandtiger]

Because there exist a number of very vocal idiots who think their belief in contradictory morals dictated by invisible sky wizard gives them some kind of say in what consenting adults who are not them are allowed to do in private.

Said vocal idiots are really fucking bothered by the idea that other people who aren't like them might be considered equal in the eyes of the law, so they go out of their way to try and come up with special terms to describe the relationships that have not a single fucking thing to do with them. They really need to make sure that "people not like them" aren't allowed to be "married" because somehow that lessens the meaning of their "marriage" despite the fact that "people who are like them" often do a perfectly fine job of making a mockery of "marriage" just fine. Hence the "special label" you seem so puzzled by.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[sunderland56]

Why should the removal of words such as "Gay" and/or "Lesbian" be deemed 'controversial'??

Because it will end up blocking The Flintstones - one of the greatest cartoons ever - just because it uses the word 'gay' in the theme song.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[BronsCon]

This. We shield our kids from reality and protect them from anything that might be able to make them a better, more balanced, person, then we wonder why they grow up to be intolerant and completely lack and character or backbone.

In reality, by making sure nobody is ever "mean" to our kids, all we do is make them weak and unable to handle the real meanies out in the real world; and by hiding reality from our kids, all we do is force them to explore their urges (be they sexual, criminal, or theological in nature, for example) without guidance, often with dangerous consequences. As for the worry? Any parent who deprives their child of thick skin and a backbone should worry, the first time their kid encounters reality outside the parent's sphere of "safety" they're going to be completely lost.

Now, I'm not saying we should abuse kids (in any sense of the word), but they do need to be exposed to reality. Perhaps not the harsh realities of life, which they'll be better equipped to avoid on their own if exposed to a broader reality, but it isn't harmful to occasionally mess with their sense of reality (and let them work it out for themselves), take their toys from them to teach them why stealing is wrong (e.g. after they've taken something of yours), or even spank them (when the thing they're doing is likely to cause more harm than that if left unchecked). It's not harmful to let them know that they are not, by default, a special snowflake and teach them that becoming such a special snowflake, the kind of person society will remember forever and talk about in history books, takes drive, determination, lots and lots of effort, and a little bit of luck.

Meanwhile, there is clear harm in telling every kid that any effort at all, just simply participating, is worthy of praise and an award; this teaches entitlement, it teaches that you only have to show up and go through the motions to get the reward, you needn't actually do a better job than anyone else, because there are plenty of awards to go around. While that's a nice sentiment and I'm sure we all wish it were actually true, I dare any one of you to try it at work (at your own risk, of course) and let me know how it works out). There is clear harm in shielding kids from the pain of their mistakes, particularly when those mistakes carry considerable risk of inducing their own pain; for example, if your kid runs into traffic once and you tell them not to, they do it again and you tell them more sternly, they do it again and you yell at them, you're doing them a disservice if they don't get a spanking the next time they do it; this is something that can hurt or kill them, it should be a painful experience for them every time it happens, so the stop doing it before they really get hurt.

But no, no reality or behavioral learning for our little special snowflakes. It's like we don't want them to succeed in the world.

Will your kid hate you if you spank them? Yeah, for about 5 seconds. Sure, they won't be happy about it, but they'll get over it (quickly, at that) and, later in life, they'll realize why you did it and be thankful, assuming you reserve that severe of a punishment for instances where they're risking severe injury or death to themselves or others. Will they curse your name when you take their toys? Of course they will! But, again, they'll get over it quickly and, later in life, realize why and be thankful, again assuming you reserve that punishment for instances where they've caused (or very seriously caused risk of) loss or damage to someone else's property through their own knowing action (e.g. they stole or purposely broke something). Those are severe punishments, which should be reserved for severe behaviors; they should not be avoided altogether. We, as a species, learn best from pain and loss.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[BronsCon]

You don't type "straight" into google and find porn. You do find porn if you type "gay" or "lesbian"; it's not on the first page, but it's certainly there.

It's not about avoiding the topic because it takes effort to discuss, it's about avoiding the literally impossible task of removing all of the porn from the results.

Or are you saying we should allow porn on a child-friendly search engine?

Mind you, I think the entire premise of a child-friendly search engine is a bit off-putting to begin with; a child young enough to not have already had the "two mommies" and "two daddies" talk shouldn't be using the internet unsupervised in the first place.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

"How am I supposed to explain to my children that two men are getting married?... I dunno. It's your shitty kid. You fuckin' tell 'em. Why is that anyone else's problem? Two guys are in LOVE and they can't get married because you don't want to talk to your ugly child for five fuckin' minutes?"
  - Louis CK

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

and christmas as well. No gay happy meetings and gay yuletides for everyone!!!

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, YOU seemed to absorb the information without any ill effects. Why do you think your niece can't?

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it's something else that made you insecure and hateful. With any luck, your niece will be able to avoid that.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[KGIII]

> ... I'm not saying we should abuse kids ...

I'm no expert but I do have two healthy and productive kids that are now adults. They're even mostly sane - though they share my sense of adventure and sense of humor. We've got a bit in common, actually.

But, I like to share this story and then I'll get to my point.

We moved to a new location and my daughter crawled up on the couch. She was just a little thing and not at all coordinated. She fell off the couch and everyone wanted to comfort her and run over and pick her up. I did not let them - I literally got in the way. We had family and friends there as we were just moving in - I got in their way.

She landed right on her head, too. Meh, it was a carpeted floor. She got up, cried a bit, and got back on the couch. To the best of my knowledge, she never fell off again.

My point? You don't have to be abusive and it shouldn't be considered abusive to get out of the way and let them learn on their own.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[BronsCon]

Sounds like you did the right thing. How much crap did you take for it?

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't type "straight" into google and find porn.

ORLY? What about that nipple on page 2 or 3?

it's about avoiding the literally impossible task of removing all of the porn from the results.

I agree with this point... in general, removing ALL porn from ANY search results it is pretty much an impossible task.

BUT... isn't the whole point of this "search engine" to achieve exactly this impossible task? If they are working under the assumption that it is impossible to filter porn from search engine results, right from the start, then what is the point of their website again?

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[sumdumass]

So then blocking the terms is appropriate? I mean if they cannot use them, they cannot find the haters about it.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[KGIII]

How much? More than was necessary but my point was proven successfully and with relative quickness so it subsided quickly. I did not, on the other hand, get an apology. I remember it quite well. You could say it was more enlightening than it seems or than it merits.

It should be noted that I later split up and divorced the mother of my kids. After a short while, they both opted to come live with me permanently. I'd like to lie and say it's because I'm such a great father but the truth is that I just had the better toys. They still spent plenty of time with their mother as I was often on the road but I was the primary care giver. The eldest was about 9 at the time and her brother trundled along behind her so we all lived together. That hampered my style but I have no regrets.

As a further point of interest, my daughter doesn't recollect the story but has heard it many times and comments on it fairly often. She claims that it was, even if she doesn't remember it, one of the more influential things in her life. I've since shared this "nugget of wisdom" (aka a Davidism) with her, "I've hit my thumb with a hammer many times but I have never done so on purpose." Between the two, I think I've managed to impart the necessary life-skills to enable her to be happy, healthy, and productive.

The boy-child... Well, he's a good kid. ;-) He's much the same though he's a bit more laid back and introspective. He's curious and a thinker but not overly cautious. They both have trusts but I did not enable them to be useless or unproductive. I sold and thought long and hard about it and they do have managed trusts but they also have control (if they want it) over those trusts. They can not live all that well on those trusts - but they won't starve on them either. I wanted them to be working, productive, and not spoiled. They were kind of old when I sold anyhow, so they weren't all that keen on being spoiled.

The daughter, she never touches her's and saves it up. The boy, well... He's smarter than we give him credit for. He's living like a king in Peru with a very sexy native. He's smart about it and will soon be the proud owner of a small bar/hotel. He's actually managing to save money because the cost of living is so low down there. He went there to collect samples of endangered plants and then have their genome sequenced. He found a lovely young native girl and is now living there and helping her and her mother out. I've only met the mother once, over a few day long visit down there, but I've met his girlfriend a couple of times now and they seem to be good people. So, he might not be as productive as he could be but he's not a leech and he's doing good things.

Which is to say, if you give them room to make errors then they'll learn from them and become better people. I could finance either and let them be entirely useless. I will not do so. I am not even leaving them a whole lot when I die. I don't want monsters for kids and that means that Ii let them experience life and not shelter them. Protect? Sure... However, the line between protecting and sheltering is not so very vague. It's pretty clear. Hell, I didn't even really protect them so much as to give them the tools to dust themselves off and fix things up for the next run.

They tell me I did a fine job. They're probably lying to make me happy but they don't come with man pages so I could only do what I felt was right at the time. They're happy, I'm happy, and that's the most important thing to me - even beyond health. It seems a lot of the lessons that I've learned center around the idea of getting out of the way and letting people make their own choices and then enabling them to reach their goals. In business and in family life, I think that method has served me well.

Ah well... Sorry for the novella but that doesn't easily fit on a bumper sticker nor in a tweet.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[sumdumass]

You do realize that the Matthew Shepard story is about a drug deal gone bad and not gay bashing like it was presented right?

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

so maybe do a whitelist for acceptable LGBT content e.g. the HRC website, Advocate Magazine, Lambda Legal, etc. It's not hard to give children access to information about LGBT issues without exposing them to porn. The blanket ban is based on the assumption that LGBT is automatically pornographic

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[BronsCon]

So much of this wisdom is missing from modern bumper-corner helicopter parenting. Thank you for documenting it here.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd have to use a 5pt font to fit one of KGill's posts on a bumper sticker!

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and an internet without the search results for people with the first name of "Gay" indexed is hardly an internet at all!

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh, you are right!

Blond-haired people are estimated at 2% of the population :O Bunch of freaks!

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[KGIII]

Or have a very big bumper!

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why do you teach kids sexual preferences by bombarding them with hetero family propaganda?

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[sumdumass]

Probably the manpower needed to segregate the sites and the objections of the employees who would need to do it. I'm sure some is automated but I doubt the AI is capable of catching everything.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[sumdumass]

Perhaps limiting the search terms is a way to make it realistically possible to filter the porn.

Re:Removal of 'gay / lesbian' is controversial??

[sumdumass]

What? Are you seriously upset because you are limited in pushing gay propaganda onto children with these restrictions?

Over 90% of the world is not gay. If you think the real world is hetero propaganda I think you might have issues that need professional help. How about we not label it at all and if either show up in search results we just call it normal family relationships?

BTW, most hetero family propaganda i can think of (movies about family and such ) tend to be dysfunctional. I'm not sure you have to fear that they will turn people not gay.

over protection and coddling

[sittingnut]

children in western countries are over protected and coddled, and as result, even as adults they have a warped sense of the world; they see moral landscape of the world simplistically, preach 'tolerance' of everything, but feel entitled to a lot, ignore the costs of that entitlement(be it blood or money), etc etc
when those who are paying the costs ( be it victims/instruments of their governments) refuse to pay(voting for 'outsiders' or perhaps resist violently or otherwise), they are branded racists, reactionaries, or terrorists,

of course in the long run those who pay will end up with the upper hand. its a ugly future for the coddled masses in west .

Re:over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fairly sure that I disagree with you, but I can't understand your argument from what you wrote here well enough to say anything meaningful.

Re:over protection and coddling

[SuricouRaven]

There is porn on the internet. The kids should just be taught what that is and that they can ignore it, close the tab and get on with whatever they were doing. Instead they learn that there is something forbidden, something so dangerous that adults will go in to a panic at the thought of their seeing it. That's probably more damaging than an occasional glimpse of porn.

Re:over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

While they are objectively overprotected and coddled by historical standards, the ability to type anything into google and see porn is NOT representative of history. While I don't think a "kid safe" search engine is a great way to use the web, simply throwing children into the adult world is experimental and likely unwise, and permission based censorship ("no internet until you're 15") is both likely to fail, likely to create friction, and, if successful, likely to hold children back. The amount and types of porn are unprecedented in history- seeking a middle ground isn't inherently shitty.

edit: haha capcha "spinner"

Re: over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a great pint. If love to hear one of those Penn State students explain that.

Re: over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. Just because he broke the law to make sure a child rapist would remain free to keep raping doesn't make him a bad person.

Re: over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm betting you don't have kids. I might be wrong but judging by your opinion you mostly likely don't. I'm a father of 5 kids, 4 boys and 1 girl, ages 6 to 21. I have enough going on in my families world. If you had kids you opinion might be a little different.

I've spent over 25 years in IT doing a variety of positions. Anyone can in the business that has done Web filtering can tell you what happens when gay and lesbian words are put into Google. Porn websites will be listed. Why? Because tag words such a 'gay' and 'lesbian' will be attached to whole host of subjects on porn sites. Just add the tag word 'teen' in addition to gay and lesbian your filtering report will go nuts. So yes it's a very good idea to blacklist gay and lesbian.

Frankly I just don't need my kids knowing about someone's personal sex life at the younger ages. I'll deal with it when they get to the 11/12 age range before I'm going to start talking about. And yes I'm one of those evil conservative republicans, however I've had gay friends and count them, 2 gay roommates even though I'm straight. I could careless what activities people do in their bedrooms or what color they are. Its always been more important to me as to how someone acts and treats others. That is how my wife and I teach our kids.

Re: over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't 42 years. You're a liar. He was convicted of abusing little boys over a 15 year period. Also, four charges were dropped after the trial started, and he was found innocent of three charges! Also, not all of the charges were rape like you haters claim.

Re:over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

children in western countries are over protected and coddled

Considering the number of children raped by Catholic priests...

And, no priest has ever been extradited back to the US to stand trial. You can't get more "western civilization" than the Catholic Church. No,we do not overprotect or coddle our children.

Re:over protection and coddling

[JaredOfEuropa]

That sounds about right... I remember a porn mag circulating amongst the boys back in elementary school. We were suitably impressed but only because it was "forbidden stuff"; it was way before anyone got sexually active and the actual content was, well, boring as hell. And not one little bit scary

Of course it helps if you get a bit of sex ed beforehand. And I don't mean the careful and considerate way modern educators go about it. Our sex ed consisted of one lesson slipped into biology class, with a drawing of a naked adult man and woman on the blackboard and the teacher talking a little about reproduction. Let the kids ask their inevitable questions, and I assure you they will quickly get bored and move on. That and the porn mag was enough to convince us kids that sex and porn are firmly in the "boring adult stuff" category.

Re: over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no proof Paterno raped any little boys.

Re:over protection and coddling

[serviscope_minor]

children in western countries are over protected and coddled, and as result, even as adults they have a warped sense of the world; they see moral landscape of the world simplistically, preach 'tolerance' of everything, but feel entitled to a lot...

Preach it. But it's even worse. The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

Truly, we are doomed.

Re: over protection and coddling

[Maritz]

Also, not all of the charges were rape like you haters claim.

Stop hating on the merely occasional child rapist ffs peeps.

Re:over protection and coddling

[Maritz]

Disagree with almost all of that. It's been a fashionable thing to say since the dawn of time. Lots and lots of child poverty in the west. Ludicrous generalisation.

Re:over protection and coddling

[AmiMoJo]

It's the opposite, people have realized that they have the power to change things and are taking it, even at some risk to themselves. They have become more willing to speak up on divisive social issues, that previously people just tended to stay quiet about because they knew they were controversial.

Some people get rather upset about this and describe it as preaching or even shaming, but actually it's just that young people today are more willing to exercise their right to free speech and an opinion. We got past the preaching era of the 80s and 90s, with those terrible TV dramas and posters, and got to a point where people feel empowered to take a stand on moral and social issues.

People deride them as "SJWs" and Twitter warriors, but at the same time complain that the SJWs are winning and that social justice is ruining their lives. It's effective, and empowering, and young people are exercising that power.

Re: over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

Broke which law?

Paterno/Spanier reported the allegations to the D.A. at the time, and Sandusky was terminated. The D.A. declined to prosecute in the end for lack of evidence, which is unfortunate. What is truly the crux of the matter is that Sandusky was permitted on campus, and that he could work on his children's charity here, which ultimately allowed him to rape children over the course of 15 years. The university could and should have done more. They erred on the side of protecting "one of their own". Their football program and Paterno were way too powerful, and that is the case for some administration types at Penn State in general.

Since then, the university has learned compliance in much greater detail, as well as risk avoidance (bad for a research institution). They're also trying to remove old data, in an effort to reduce the possibility of discovery and legal liability. There is an "ethics" effort, but I can't say people (staff, faculty) were acting unethical... it was the football management that was. The concentration of power remains - we learned nothing.

Re:over protection and coddling

[Plus1Entropy]

And stop those damn kids skateboardin' on the sidewalks!

Re:over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how your justification works exactly the same way for Black Panthers and terrorists.

Re: over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

They only seem to practice free speech to remove it from others.

Re:over protection and coddling

[AmiMoJo]

There is a reason we have an 18 certificate for films, and it's not just because people are prudes. Child psychology has learnt a lot about how children process certain things, and it's not just with a lack of interest.

So while I agree that trying to block all access to porn until age 18 is a bad idea, we do need to make sure children get a solid education and controlled exposure so that they can interpret it in a healthy way. A lot of porn is quite violent and derogatory when you look at it objectively, and definitely is not at all realistic. It's really important that children understand that porn isn't normal behaviour and that they are not expected to act that way.

Young children might just close the tab, but as they start to reach their teenage years they will be curious. What it really boils down to is that schools need to show children much more graphic depictions of healthy, consensual and respectful sex. It's really hard to overcome society's objection to that, and to produce something that doesn't come over as cheesy and lame. There are porn companies that specialise in this sort of thing who could be involved.

Re:over protection and coddling

[dave420]

In case no-one gets it, that is a quote from Socrates, showing the GP's lamentations on this matter to be desperately unoriginal.

Re:over protection and coddling

[Beezlebub33]

That sounds about right... I remember a porn mag circulating amongst the boys back in elementary school. We were suitably impressed but only because it was "forbidden stuff"; it was way before anyone got sexually active and the actual content was, well, boring as hell. And not one little bit scary .

For me, it was middle school. It was impressive, but not because it was forbidden. It's because it was sexually exciting and 'fit' with other things that were going on with me. I had been noticing various young lady parts for a while, and then to be able to see a picture of them uncovered was truly awesome.

Assuming this is a fairly standard episode, the question is what this would mean for what kids should be exposed to. Does it mean that kids should be exposed to naked parts earlier (so that when they hit teens it doesn't have such a dramatic effect)? Does it mean that I should not be able to see them until far past the teens? Don't know.

Re:over protection and coddling

[KGIII]

When I was a kid, porn was definitely scary. It had big women, covered in hair, and not one bit of air-brushing.

Hmm... It was black and white. Hugh and Larry have done great things for this world.

Re:over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Proud Believer in No Censorship for Children,

There are strong indications we are biologically programmed to learn by mimicry. When you have spoken to a ten-year-old who tearfully, wracked with guilt, tells you he tried to penetrate his eight-year-old girl cousin, or when your toddler's preschool director tells you your two-year-old boy was aggressively assaulted orally by a four-year-old girl, perhaps you will feel differently.

Proud Believer in Censorship for Single-Digit-Aged Children

Re: over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

My roommate once protected his friend that was raping women in the nursing home where he worked. He did that because he hated older women after his own mother and later grandmother abandoned him. Maybe Paterno hates little boys.

Re: over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

Taht last sentence is chilling.

Re:over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a clue: when a child hits another and there are adults around to guide them, and explain what the boundaries and consequences of such actions are, the behavior is controlled.

When you don't have adult guidance, it's Lord of the Flies and Blue Lagoon.

Re:over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

In case no-one gets it, that is a quote from Socrates, showing the GP's lamentations on this matter to be desperately unoriginal.

In case you didn't notice, there isn't a Greek or Roman Empire any more. So maybe Socrates was onto something here.

Re:over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

"In my day...yadda yadda...get off my lawn!"

Re:over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

what does GP stand for?

Re:over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

"grandparent" post

or, alternatively, "Greek Philosopher"

Re:over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

healthy, consensual and respectful sex

That doesn't really mean anything. Extreme bondage and all the hard core stuff requires far more consent and respect than basic sex. Most of it isn't unhealthy too.

Re:over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. Sex is fun. "Respectful" sex is what hardcore God-fearing people do to have children while hating the sin.

I will never buy the "reason to have 18+" for films being that "children understand porn isn't normal behavior", as long as you have killing, violence, beatings rated fora younger audience than consensual sex. I don't think you do either. I think you prefer porn to be blocked because you find it demeaning to women (it's a line most feminists take) and you're accepting a ridiculous rule because it does have the effect you want it to. Just be honest about it.

Re:over protection and coddling

[Anonymous Coward]

> Meh. Sex is fun.

*Sigh* I remember when that was true.

At my age, it's now more like a duty, a chore, a logistical problem and performance evaluation rolled into one.

I can only recommend porn + viagra beforehand - or better yet, don't get married!

honestly...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see why they would remove "gay" and "lesbian" from their safe list but it's only because so damn much porn has at least one of those two words in the title. I mean "Lesbian Puppy Trainers" could be kinda boring, or X-rated and quite kinky. That said, I couldn't name the last time I saw "Heterosexual Slut Puppies" but I'm certain I've seen "Lesbian Slut Puppies" and surely "Gay Slut Puppies" exists.

Kiddle huh?

[mentil]

Not sure I'd want my kid using a 'visual search engine' that's a portmanteau of 'kid' and 'diddle'.

what next?

[frovingslosh]

Internet censorship doesn't work?? Oh, come on! Next you'll be trying to tell us that Ebay is a bunch of crooks.

Re:what next?

[serviscope_minor]

Are they? I've always had great success buying on eBay, but maybe it's the things I buy. I mostly use the shops rather than auctions. I even had one of those Chinese vendors with a fulfillment warehouse in England ship me a power transformer when the one in my cheap re work station died, quickly. Given they don't sell them as independent items, they must have used quick shipping from China, not the slow boat.

Maybe I avoid things that look too good to be true?

I also use it as a source of very much second hand things, like e.g. a b/g only Wi-Fi access point to pick a recent example.

Re:what next?

[digitig]

I assume that censorship blocking on certain words is just a sneaky way to get the kids to learn a foreign language...

Re:what next?

[AmiMoJo]

The biggest issue with eBay is the way it circumvents consumer protection laws. For example you get commercial sellers using private accounts, which gets them out of the usual commercial vendor requirements for accepting returns and the like.

The worst aspect is PayPal. In most European countries there are rules requiring credit card companies to deal with disputes and pay a full refund if the item is over a certain value, regardless of what the seller does. There is also the possibility of doing a chargeback. Unfortunately PayPal breaks this, because technically your payment was to PayPal and not the seller. As long as PayPal abide by their rules, which are much much longer than Hamlet and much much harder to understand, they did their bit and you have no case with the credit card company.

That's why you should always avoid paying for stuff with PayPal if possible. It strips away your consumer rights.

Re:what next?

[omnichad]

To be honest, as a US Paypal user (and as someone who sets up Paypal payments for clients), Paypal is overly generous with refunding customers, to the point of sellers not wanting to deal with it anymore and enabling fraud by the consumer.

Re:what next?

[serviscope_minor]

The biggest issue with eBay is the way it circumvents consumer protection laws. For example you get commercial sellers using private accounts, which gets them out of the usual commercial vendor requirements for accepting returns and the like.

Interesting... I've not personally encountered that. At what point do sales turn from being a private transaction to covered under the sales of goods act? I don't know the law on this, but you automatically become a sole trader whether or not you register with HMRC at some point.

Nonetheless, apart from occasional second hand stuff, I seem to mostly buy from established companies in the UK and Chinese companies for which there aren't any protections anyway.

Re:what next?

[AmiMoJo]

eBay has a per month selling limit for private individuals. What some businesses do is have a primary account and a number of burner private accounts. The private accounts get all the crap that is likely to be returned, like old hard drives marked as "untested" (meaning they were tested and found to be broken and out of warranty) or fake goods.

eBay tries to detect them by looking at the addresses and banking details they use, but it's easy to avoid.

Gets rid of bad words?

[penguinoid]

It also claims to get rid of indecent images and 'bad words.'

What does it replace "censorship" with?

Re:Gets rid of bad words?

[TheReaperD]

"patriotism"

Re:Gets rid of bad words?

[darkain]

"Make America Great Again"

Re: Gets rid of bad words?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you figure it is censorship? The government isn't forcing you to use it, the choice is still yours to not use it, at least in the US you still have the choice.

I really hate people who take things and go freaking overboard with things like this. It's simply an option for parents to use. Just like installing the free K9 Web filtering software which is what I did on my kids computers.

Re:Gets rid of bad words?

[dunkelfalke]

"All you have to do is follow the worms"

Re: Gets rid of bad words?

[penguinoid]

How do you figure it is censorship?

Because it is censorship. As I implied, "censorship" is considered a bad word, although as you said, it's sometimes a useful tool when optional and done by a non-government entity.

Re: Gets rid of bad words?

[Anonymous Coward]

Censorship by parents is not exactly the same as censorship by government, but it's still censorship.

Kindle

[darkain]

Am I the only one who read the entire summary and thought the entire time that this was an extension for the Amazon Kindle, only to finally realize that I was reading the name wrong all along!?

Kid internet

[Razed By TV]

Make another internet just for kids.

Really.

We already have mobile versions of websites. Why not kid versions? Little Billy can go to Samsung.kid and get treated the kid friendly page, instead of blah blah blah about investor relations and global operations etc. If Samsung doesn't want to put in a kid page with cartoons advertising their wares, they can just not have anything at all

Other educational sites can operate at whatever level of maturity the account holder can view.

Don't allow anonymous access. Have registration through the school system. Make it a crime to post content unsuitable for children on it.

I can see this not being ideal when you might start expecting a child to do research into subjects. 11? 12?
But younger than that, I can't see why children would need anything close to unfettered web access.

It still has the pitfalls of stolen identities/credentials being used to view or post inappropriate content.
And how do you handle children posting bad content? That I do not know.

Re:Kid internet

[Opportunist]

Because what you mention as examples of other "special" forms of internet are what the user wants. You really think kids want to be censored? Please. If anything, being "cool" (or whatever the word for it is today) entails evading parents' limitations.

Can I somehow keep you from surfing to a non-mobile page with your cell phone? Nope. Can I keep Billy from watching porn? Nope.

Re:Kid internet

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have mobile versions of websites. Why not kid versions?

Because mobile sites double as the kid version.

Re:Kid internet

[SlashDread]

This is about at "nanny state" bullshit as it comes.

What the hell do you really want? -Mandatory- "kids internet"? What if the parents think you should stay out of their fucking business? I don't want your creepy morals near my kid. Now GTFOML.

Re:Kid internet

[penguinoid]

Make another internet just for kids.

It would have a *lot* less content. And it would probably consist largely of content harmful to kids. Not porn, cuss words, or violence -- worse than that.

Re:Kid internet

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be 100% advertising aimed at children. That sounds far worse than the current situation.

Bad Science

[troll -1]

There is zero evidence that an uncensored web causes any harm to children. This is witchcraft all over again.

Re:Bad Science

[Opportunist]

Parents want it, parents pay for it, so there's a market for it.

In the end, if everything works as it should, parents are happy they did something to protect little Billy from the bad reality out there and little Billy, being far more computer savvy than his parents, easily circumvents it and is happy that he can still have all the content he wants. Plus a company makes money from gullible people.

I.e. internet business as usual.

Re:Bad Science

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually there is plenty of evidence for this. But what you don't see you can't account for. This is cognitive bias and ignorance all over again.

Re:Bad Science

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you define "harm" as "thinking thoughts I find unpleasant."

Re:Bad Science

[Anonymous Coward]

There is zero evidence that guns and knives cause any harm to children.
There is zero evidence that fire causes any harm to children.
There is zero evidence that cyanide causes any harm to children.
There is zero evidence that child abuse causes any harm to children.
There is zero evidence that molestation causes any harm to children.

See? I can pull that shit too.

observations

[Anonymous Coward]

death is a bad word, die is not. mass grave is not, 2 clicks later I am looking at something I don't want to look at. suicide is a bad word, but right to die is okay. Searching for gay or lesbian returns a special message "You have entered an LGBT related search query. Please realize that while Kiddle has nothing against the LGBT community, it's hard to guarantee the safety of all the search results for such queries. We recommend that you talk to your parent or guardian about such topics." searching for suicide or kill myself just returns the same bad word message. Gun is a bad word, rifle and pistol is not. deep throat is banned, throat deep is not.

Why did they choose a mad looking robot as the mascot?

Re:observations

[digitig]

"Die" is a good example of why blocking on words is too inaccurate. As well as the meaning related to death, it's also a forming tool and the singular of "dice". My kids encountered Suetonius's "The die is cast" ("alea iacta est") while still at primary school (although they didn't know at that stage it was Suetonius, only that it was said to Julius Caesar, who they thought was a character in the Asterix comic books). If you block on "die", you get too many false positives, if you don't block on "die" (and want to eliminate any mention of death - do none of these kids keep hamsters as pets?) you get too many false negatives.

Re:observations

[Flavianoep]

When I looked up "homossexuality" (sic), I got 2 results and an ad for a gay dating website full of porn. Are they supposing that all children will have proper spelling?

Re:observations

[Koen Lefever]

My kids encountered Suetonius's "The die is cast" ("alea iacta est") while still at primary school (although they didn't know at that stage it was Suetonius, only that it was said to Julius Caesar, who they thought was a character in the Asterix comic books).

Caesar died in 44BC, Suetonius was born in 69 or 70AD. So Suetonius never said anything to Caesar,

Plutarch wrote that Caesar, paraphrasing or quoting Menander, said it in Greek. Suetonius reports Caesar saying "iacta alea est".

Re:observations

[digitig]

That's what I get learning history from comic books.

Want to mess with them?

[Opportunist]

Demand to censor all the religious texts. You know, the ones where they stone people to death, and where they nail the good guys to crosses. That's scary for kids! Scarring them for life! Get rid of that filth!

Then let the religious nuts and the SJWs duke it out. I bring the popcorn.

Re:Want to mess with them?

[Maritz]

You peeps are super fond of that SJW aconym aren't you. Was with you until you apparently unironically used that. Yuck.

Re:Want to mess with them?

[Anonymous Coward]

For a sub-culture promoting "calling out" so much, SJWs sure hate being called out.

Pass the popcorn GP.

Re:Want to mess with them?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not "calling out" to use the term SJW. It's been overused so much it's become literally meaningless. The only purpose it serves these days is as a red flag that the person using it can't relate to women. It would be funny if wasn't so pitiful. The entire "movement" came from one guy's butt hurt that his girlfriend slept around, and he's the only guy in the "movement" to ever have a girlfriend, so I guess that's why they made him their god.

Re:Want to mess with them?

[Opportunist]

And I was with you until this became the generally accepted SJW behaviour. Shoveling shit on other people and accusing them of all kinds of detrimental behavior DESERVES a reaction.

You're no special snowflake, you're not entitled to anything. Grow up and stop being a whiny little asshole.

Re:Want to mess with them?

[Opportunist]

Huh? Who?

Nah. We're just fed up with people thinking they're entitled to offending everyone and then bitching and ranting when they get the reaction they deserve. No god involved. No goddess either, btw.

Re:Want to mess with them?

[Anonymous Coward]

haha look at THIS big boy

using his words and trying to look smart :^)

Impossible task

[Anonymous Coward]

Apart from the crazy idea to censor the internet, it's probably an impossible task.

How would they sensor foul expressions / "unsafe" topics in every language in the world, including CJKVTA etc. ?

How do they define which topics are "unsafe".. is it only nudity-sex-related (what Americans fear the most), or is it also religious brain-wash, commercial brain-wash (read Disney/ Mattel etc), etc ? What is unsafe to a soccer mom in Virginia may be safe to me, but I find other topics very unsafe.

This is very scary stuff, and yet another attempt of keeping kids away from dangerous nudity. Now, how was the statistics of American teen pregnancies again ?

slashdotted?

[Mirar]

I can't actually get it to work (other than complain about certain words, like lesbian).

Is it slashdotted?

Self imposed limitations are not censorship

[RobertMaefs]

Me deciding what not to read is not censorship, and the means by which I choose to not read it is not oppressing you. Me helping my children decide what not to read is not bad parenting and using this or any other means at our disposal to be selective about our choices is our business. Calling this censorship is as ludicrous as calling the nyt best sellers list censorship because it's a finite list of all possible books. Get over yourselves.

Re:Self imposed limitations are not censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling this censorship is as ludicrous as calling the nyt best sellers list censorship because it's a finite list of all possible books.

Great, I love that statement

Khloe did one too??

[Lotus456]

I thought it was Kim who made the sex tape, with Ray J?

Not so kid safe results even now

[dsmatthews9379]

Since when are sites that require "Adobe Flash" safe for kids when a child can be manipulated into turning on the camera and microphone in the flash settings?

Same Old Crap

[JimSadler]

I am so very certain that a five-year- old will be disturbed for life if he finds a Playboy magazine and sees nude girls. Oh! the horrors, the agony, the moral outrage, are just too wicked to bear. Really people, is it 1930 again?

Re:Same Old Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

May I introduce you to hardcore bdsm porn?

Re:Same Old Crap

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like the rantings of a naked man outside of an elementary school.

Teach a man to fish...

[Plus1Entropy]

Wouldn't it be more effective to educate children about the internet and how to surf it safely? This goes beyond protecting them from things that are considered "obscene" or "vulgar". I can only imagine the application for this search engine is children who are surfing unsupervised. Do you trust your child not to accidentally download malware? Do you trust them to recognize a phishing attempt? Are these guys at Kiddle (yeah it's a stupid name) actually able to filter all of these things out as well? At least that false sense of security will put your mind at ease while your kid is on Facebook being recruited by ISIS.

Re:How dare we protect children...

[Anonymous Coward]

> It always has been, and always will be, a mental illness.

I dunno, the vast majority of the gays and lesbians I have met seem quite healthy and functional.

At least, no more unbalanced than the average hetero person.

Is this a kind of joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who will be the judge to decide what website is GOOD for kids?

Network content filtering is broken by design

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha-haa, this is doomed to fail unless it uses a whitelist instead of blacklist. And even then, the whitelisted sites will soon evolve to have different, possibly even controversial content. The security software vendors are of course ready to sell these filters, but they simply can not block something based on the amount of pink on pictures or for some forbidden words.

Re:Network content filtering is broken by design

[Anonymous Coward]

but they simply can not block something based on the amount of pink on pictures

Thanks $diety for Orc porn.

Re:How dare we protect children...

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone seems to exhibit signs of mental illness, it's the religious types, adults who believe in fairy tales and seek to force those beliefs upon others. Homosexuals aren't recruiting or brainwashing your kids - it's the religious people who are trying to do that.

If it only worked...

[bradley13]

I entered an ambiguous search term: "cute chicks", figuring a child-friendly search engine would probably show me pics of fuzzy baby chickens:

- It's either broken or incredibly slow. I waited...and waited...and waited... What is it, do the editors manually answer every query?

- I went to KidzSearch, which is also powered by Google Safe Search, entered the same term, and there are simply zero results. Zero?

- Enter the same term in Google Safe Search, and the top five results are baby chickens. So the search term works.

Ok, so I was trying to trick them, so let's try something ordinary: "puppies". Still zero results, even though Google Safe Search has zillions. Same result, i.e., nothing happened. I guess it's kid-safe if you never return any results. Boring, but safe...

- - - - -

Update: I tried refreshing the page, with the search term "puppies". This time I got a clear message "looks like your query contained some bad words." Bad puppies, bad! Somebody whack this site with a rolled up newspaper.

DINOSAUR EGGS

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops, looks like your query contained some bad words. Please try again!

Nice!!!

Re:DINOSAUR EGGS

[omnichad]

Chaos theory. Have to be sure the female dinosaurs at the park don't get any egg-generating ideas on their own.

Also checkout Photosforclass.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Another website that has done this for 1.5 years - Photos for Class

Odd results

[Anonymous Coward]

Just run a search on the work "hi"... 3rd result

Just seeking my hackerspace :)

[sigfood]

And found that : http://la.buvette.org/vrac/kid... but on the other side, http://wemakeporn.tetalab.org/ :)

I hope they block wikipedia

[AC-x]

I hope for their sake they block results from Wikipedia, have you seen the sexual deprivation and, gasp, child pornography on that encyclopaedia of filth, won't somebody please think of the children!

Not this shit again

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"...Kiddle.co filters its results so that only 'safe' sites are displayed..."

Every few years something like this comes along and it always ends up being an abject failure.

The fact is that effective censoring is difficult, especially when the subject matter is fluid and subjective.

Re:Not this shit again

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is that effective censoring is difficult,

So is law enforcement. Should we remove all laws or policemen because people 1. still manage to break the law and 2. get away with it?

The engine is a service. It's there for parents to let their kids do school research and look up videos in a safer environment than the "unprotected web". If Slashdot wasn't so chock-full of child porn enthusiasts, I wouldn't expect the backlash against such a service, but here it is. While they chirp and burp to claim moral high grounds on things like "censorship" and "global warming", they certainly puff out their chests in defense of exposing children to porn and vulgarity as much as possible.

Destroying evil is better than preventing it. Preventing it is better than putting in mitigating measures. Mitigating measures are better than nothing. And there IS evil in this world. You can be certain of that.

Re:Best filter (except for all the others)

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck your faggot host file, only anus-brains would use a shitpuke 'solution' like your craptastic pile of dog shit.

The usual puritan "child protection"

[jopet]

Will prevent everyone to spot a naked female nipple, but just do an image search for "beheadings", "execution" or "crucifiction" and you well get graphic pictures of extreme torture.
Yeah, the word "homosexual" is censored, but it is no problem to look at a picture showing Nazi soldiers executing people in a concentration camp.
This is obscene and disgusting, not nipples or "bad words", motherfuckers.

Re:How dare we protect children...

[Anonymous Coward]

You might stop to consider that YOU have been brainwashed into thinking "different" = "bad."

Childless neckbeards

[Anonymous Coward]

I love reading the replies from the childless, neckbearded dolts on Slashdot to topics like this.

Sorry, I care about my kids and will a) track their movements and activities until they're old enough to make their own decisions and b) protect their innocence as long as I can from e.g. pr0n. Doesn't mean I spy on their every movement, and "helicopter parent" isn't really a thing.

But by all means, all you sweaty nerds rant and rave about "censorware" and how "porn isn't really that bad" - it's amusing at least.

Re:Childless neckbeards

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what's more amusing? That you think you can protect your kids from the big, bad world.

Also, that you think your kids are "innocent." (Hint: if they're beyond kindergarten, they know about sex. The secret is out)

Re:Childless neckbeards

[Anonymous Coward]

You are probably American. Consider this: American kids are usually forbidden to see any nudity. To learn about sex. To hear the truth from adults. Kids in northen Europe are allowed to see nudity, as a natural thing. They go to the Sauna nude, both sexes mixed. They have sex ed in school. Parents talk to them about these things from they are around 4-6 years. But these kids are generally protected from violence, they do not have guns, and they not taught that everyone else should be feared.

Now WHICH country has the highest rate of teen pregnancies ? Which country has the highest rate of violence

Just wondering.

Re:Childless neckbeards

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol.. says the childless neckbeard. No - they really don't know beyond the very basics, but then again they don't go to slum schools. Also, don't know how old you are but shit's different from when I was a kid in the 80's and 90's.

Re:Childless neckbeards

[Anonymous Coward]

Amusing, but if you take out the statistics of about 30 inner city shitholes from US statistics you get a _whole_ other picture.

I don't live in the inner city, so things here are completely different from the picture you get looking at America as a whole.

I'll pit the statistics of middle class (and above) US suburbs against Europe's anytime.

Re:Childless neckbeards

[Anonymous Coward]

The major difference today is that pictures of sex are much, MUCH more readily available. I don't think they're appropriate for kids, no, but I also don't think they cause any real harm. Pre-pubescent kids find sex funny, not disturbing.

And no, it's not that different from yesteryear. I grew up in a small midwestern town in the 1970s, and was probably in first grade when a classmate told me "did you know if you stick your dink in a girl, she'll have a baby?"

I heard my first dirty joke no later than 2nd grade. I knew all the dirty words by 5th grade.

The only way to "protect" your kids is to lock them up in the cellar and allow no contact with other people. You'd do far better to prepare your kids for what's out there.

It's worse than that

[compro01]

This search engine blocks searches for things like Childline.

https://twitter.com/LaSouvarine/status/704651356351520768

NOT censorship

[SoftwareArtist]

People have the right to speak, and other people have the right not to listen. If someone wants to browse a version of the internet where everything "inappropriate" has been removed, they have that right. This company is trying to provide that for them. When they block certain content, that isn't censorship. It's giving their customers what they want, and performing exactly the function those customers came to their site for in the first place.

You can argue this will never be very effective. Possibly that's true. You can disagree with their choices about what's inappropriate. Well, don't use their site if you don't like the policies they've chosen. If a lot of people feel the same way, they probably won't get much business. I sure wouldn't invest in this company. And you might feel parents shouldn't be so protective of their children, that it's important to be exposed to these things. Maybe or maybe not, but parents have the right to decide how they'll raise their children.

But the one thing this site absolutely is not doing is censoring the internet. They're not doing anything to block you from reaching content you want to get. Instead, they're providing a service to block content you want to have blocked. A service that you go to specifically because you don't want that content appearing on your computer. That's no more censorship than the spam filter on my email.

Re:NOT censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

The dictionary disagrees with you.

Censorship:
the system or practice of censoring books, movies, letters, etc.

Censor (verb)
to examine books, movies, letters, etc., in order to remove things that are considered to be offensive, immoral, harmful to society, etc.

Assuming you're okay with "website" being included in the "etc" above, what we're discussing certainly qualifies: Parents are paying Kiddle to examine websites in order to remove ones that are considered to be offensive for various reasons. If that's not censorship, then I need to see your Newspeak dictionary.

2016: Someone else raising your kids

[kheldan]

Why do people keep making the same mistakes over and over again, ad infinitum?

If you're so damned worried about what your kid might see on the Internet, then maybe, I dunno, you should supervise all their time using the Internet, instead of expecting some total strangers on some allegedly 'kid-safe' search site to do it for you?

Dinosaurs

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope it removes all references to dinosaurs, because I know that the world is 6000 years old. I need to protect my kids.

Ultimate filter

[manu0601]

They successfully built the ultimate filter: whatever words I type, it keeps telling me the query contains bad words.

"Atom", "China", "Kid", "Robot", "Obama", "School", "Neutral" are reported bad. Even "Mickey Mouse" is bad (well, I may agree...)

eBay

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been on eBay from the early days. There were no pictures; digital cameras cost $3,000 or something. Ebay sent the buyer and seller mutual emails and let them work out the transaction. There was no Paypal. I think eBay's fees were 6%.
Over the years I've had over 10,000, maybe 20,000 sales on eBay. I've had one negative feedback given to me, undeserved (the item was clearly described as salvage) which I got reversed. As a buying customer I've had a handful of bad buying experiences. I hate to inspire anyone, but currently if someone is out to intentionally scam someone on eBay, it's easier for someone posing as a buyer to scam a seller than the other way around.
I would assert that people who've had bad experiences with eBay, either as a seller or a buyer, have had just bad luck. If you lose $100 on one of your first 100 deals on ebay, you are likely to quit in disgust. If you lose $100 on your 1,000 deal, and know you've saved $1,000 or more on those other deals, then you may shrug your shoulders. Or--and I hate to blame the victim-- you missed seeing or feeling out some clues that this particular deal can't be trusted. Every now and then I see something for sale there I want, but I glean the seller has an attitude, or a blase flaky feeling, or something. Skip them and onto the next. I guess what I'm saying is eBay is like old horse trading or used car buying/selling. You can do okay, but you can get taken. A savvy street smart person is less likely to get taken. But you can also save $$. I just bought some soap bars for about 1/3 of the store price. Save $15; it adds up.
Now, the real dishonest aspect of eBay is eBay itself. Try figuring out the selling fees. Or looking them up. Currently now around 14%. But in some categories it could be $25%. Or listing something for sale and later finding out the choices you thought you had clicked on didn't stick, something that will cost you money.
Anyone remember this?:
https://www.google.com/search?q=ebay+tells+member+to+destroy+violin&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Been done

[Anonymous Coward]

There is at least one company already doing this and are experienced experts in the field, including the human editing and use of Google Safesearch.
San Diego based company, Edgewave with the product iPrism.

Best filter (& more for speed + security)

[Anonymous Coward]

APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-4 32/64-bit http://apk.it-mate.co.uk/APKHo...

Gets data for more speed & security via 10 security sites.

Less power/cpu/ram+ IO resource use vs. local DNS servers + addons w/ less security issues vs. DNS + routers.

Less complex vs firewalls (needing layered filtering drivers - hosts don't + firewalls block less used IP addresses, hosts block more used host-domain names) complimenting 'em.

Antivirus = reactive. Hosts = proactive, blocking infection BEFORE you get it.

APK

P.S.=> Hosts do more 4 speed (hardcodes + adblocks) & faster vs. addons, security (vs. bad sites/dns security issues), reliability (vs. downed/poisoned dns), & anonymity (dns requestlogs/trackers) vs. other "so-called -solutions'" w/ what you natively have. Unlike Adblock/UBlock/Ghostery it's not blockable by ClarityRay/BlockIQ