Google's porn problem and how to fix it | Hacker News Reader

Google's porn problem and how to fix it

blog.styleguidance.com

12 pointsvaksel17 comments

> "Do you think a 10 year old girl searching for green shorts or a red top, should be seeing any of those images?"

No, but a 10 year-old girl searching for green shorts should have Safe Search on.

Exactly! I work for a large k-12 school district, and our content-filtering system blocks any Google image search that does not have safe-search enabled. Not fool-proof, but certainly cuts down on 99% of these kind of results.

Is it just me, or did the author of that post not make the argument for why the safe search options are insufficient? Is there some obvious reason I'm not getting?

He didn't even appear to try.

It seems that he wants Safe Search effectively always On, so that he can leave his (now pointless) preference switched to Off.

The thing you're not getting is that the writer is apparently a puritan and wants to force his world view on you.

it's about results relevancy, here Google is saying that the #2 best result for "red top" is a porn image.

No, here Google is saying that the #2 best result for "red top" with porn included in your results is a porn image.

It could be possible that the porn image is actually one of the more desirable results if one is searching for "red top" with Safe Search off.

Sounds like a non-issue. If you work in someplace so draconian that you'll get canned if an illicit image accidentally graces your monitor, then you probably shouldn't have turned off SafeSearch in the first place.

The guy's a retard. His beef is that he gets porn when he turns off safe-search. There is a reason why safe search exists. Believe it or not, people use words other than cock and tits in the vicinity of porn images. gasp shock

I don't know, but a lot of you seem to disagree with him.

However, this is actually a decent idea in my opinion. He makes an "okay" case in the post except that he ends it with some reasoning that Google should care about their image (pun not intended). He should have ended it by pointing out that it would then finally be "safe" to link to Google Images without having to worry (too much) about the results that might appear for the user (you don't know if they have safe search on or off).

Hell, I can think if valid reasons for why I could have wanted to link to a Google Image resultset and not doing it because of what might pop up for the user.

This might also have the added benefit of porn-sites playing the search rankings less. At least for innocent words.

> it would then finally be "safe" to link to Google Images without having to worry (too much) about the results that might appear for the user (you don't know if they have safe search on or off).

You can manually set the search level in the URL.

I can think of one particular case where this would help me. I somewhat frequently need to search for how to do X in LaTeX. If I'm not a little careful with my search terms, sometimes the image results are a bit interesting. :P

why are you using google image search to look for "how to do X in LaTeX?"

No. No, you eejit. If it is somehow a crime to search for porn with the term "Soviet steel production" or "cheap overall shopping", then convict me. Safe Search. Use It, Or Shut Up.

"Turning off safe search doesn’t mean, I want to see irrelevant results at the front of my search results."

If you went through the trouble to turn off safe search, presumably you don't think that the results there because you turned off safe search are irrelevant.

Google just saw a spike for the GIS terms:

- green shorts

- red top

- cute girl

- orange pants

- tank top

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