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.
Localized Google search result exclusions: Statement of issues and call for data with Jonathan Zittrain
The authors are studying exclusions from search engine search results, and have found some 113 sites excluded, in whole or in part, from the French google.fr and German google.de compared with google.com. Learn more about the situation and context, test the exclusions for yourself, and submit further sites suspected to be excluded. Full article.