Google offers interested users a version of its search engine restricted by a service it calls SafeSearch, intended to omit references to sites with “pornography and explicit sexual content.” However, testing indicates that SafeSearch blocks at least tens of thousands of web pages without any sexually-explicit content, whether graphical or textual. Blocked results include sites operated by educational institutions, non-profits, news media, and national and local governments. Among searches on sensitive topics such as reproductive health, SafeSearch blocks results in a way that seems essentially random; it is difficult to construct a rational non-arbitrary basis for which pages are allowed and which are omitted. Full article.