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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.
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?
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