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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.
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.
Not sure I'd want my kid using a 'visual search engine' that's a portmanteau of 'kid' and 'diddle'.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Internet censorship doesn't work?? Oh, come on! Next you'll be trying to tell us that Ebay is a bunch of crooks.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
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.
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?
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.
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.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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?
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
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
> 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
"So long and thanks for all the fish."