Microsoft's Bing Refuses Search Term "Sex" In India | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft's Bing Refuses Search Term "Sex" In India

yro.slashdot.org

13 pointsgasull23 comments

Microsoft has finally understood how to generate buzz and get publicity... even without having to spend 100 million dollars.

Cuil also generated a ton of buzz and publicity.

Blocking random keywords just makes a search engine look stupid and useless. By all means have a filter and allow users to decide on adult content, but outright blocking is just a silly decision, especially when the blocking is broken.

A search on bing.de (Germany) for "sexual healing", the popular song by Lionel Richie, is blocked.

The blocking seems ridiculously bad - "sex":blocked, "teen fun sex":allowed.

"bear sex","horse sex":blocked, "goat sex":perfectly acceptable, have as much as you like. A dangerous precedent pushing entire countries toward goat porn.

I'd suggest changing the title - this is not just India.

Germany, Turkey, Malaysia, India, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, China, Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and 'arabian countries'.

I doubt it's intentional. Pornography is illegal in India (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_india#Online_por...). Microsoft is being conservative when complying with the Information Technology Act of 2000.

"According to the act, anyone publishing or transmitting or causing to be published or transmitted content of a pornographic nature can be punished with imprisonment or a fine." - http://in.reuters.com/article/paidmediaAtoms/idIN19619307872...

What if someone needs information on sex (something which is so natural to human beings)

instead of "To get results, change your search terms." I should at least be given a wikipedia link or pages with information on safe sex, etc..

"To get results, change your search terms." and no option to turn the filter off -- bad user experience

sex isn't pornography right!

It seems like Microsoft has a bad habit of letting lawyers, executives, and accountants sink good products & services with arbitrary and silly restrictions on how you can actually use it.

This is slightly tangential, I guess, but could someone explain this facet of Indian culture to me? I have heard that India can be very socially conservative, but, well, the Kama Sutra did come from there. Is there a sort of Victorian dichotomy of public conservatism and private debauchery? Is it a religious thing? Is the Kama Sutra the product of an older culture that no longer really exists? Are there strong generational divisions on this sort of issue?

The Kama Sutra is so old there's a whole chapter on what to do with your tail.

Did you create that account for the sole purpose of making that joke!?

Yes I did.

Your last two guesses are spot on.

Since the Kama Sutra India (and the rest of South Asia) has been subject strong to first Middle Eastern/Muslim and then Victorian British influences.

That said, in most countries, there are huge differences between different socio-economic and ethnic groups, to say nothing of differences between individuals.

The Kama Sutra is 1,600 years old. It's like comparing Roman debauchery with puritanism in Arkansas. Modern India indeed leans heavily socially conservative.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindutva

Hindu fundies make bible thumping republicans look like hippies. They are quite dangerous, but fortunately only inside India.

Oh and I thought that I was going to give microsoft a chance and try using bing instead of google... But yes I can confirm it, here (in malaysia) searching for sex returns "THE SEARCH SEX MAY RETURN SEXUALLY EXPLICIT CONTENT." (and all in caps as if they needed to shout it on top of that)

No way I'm going to use a search engine like this.

... and so the trolling begins.

Seriously though, this is news on HN why? MS not allowing a sexual term in India.. ooo, what about Google helping the Indian authorities on the arrest of an Orkut user over making comments about a Political leader in India, even though freedom of speech is one of the six fundamental rights the Indian Constitution grants its citizens.

Which do you think is the worse of the two?

It's not that I'm pro-bing, I'm just anti-anti-bing. How about we give the site a few months to fuckup before we start with the comments like above.

I'd much rather see people judge the site based on its merits rather than get so instantly polarised before it's had a chance to find its footing.

Well it's simple I'm currently living in Malaysia if a search engine doesn't allow me to search for things I'm not going to use it...

I'm not much pro-google either for the reason above... It's just that I think such action from MS is short-sighted (and don't tell me it's because of the local regulations since Google and Yahoo here do search for those terms).

Now it's true I guess it doesn't add much to the discussion, it's just that I'm quite irritated when I see a company that self-censors in order to get the local governments to appreciate them.

Well, simple question... have you used Bing extensively before today? If so, have you searched for content of a sexual nature and if not, do you honestly care?

For all we know, it could have been an oversight on MS's part (the site is less than a week old) and it will be a simple case of switching on or off a setting eventually, like what you can do with Google.

EDIT - I signed into Bing using my Live account and noticed theres a setting to filter sexually explicit content like with Google, so perhaps this is the same thing, maybe you just need to sign in to do it.

EDIT #2 - I just switched to India & Malaysia's settings (was on Australia) and noticed that you couldn't set location or the sexual settings (seemed like a recurring theme), but then switched to China and noticed you could set Location, so perhaps its just a bug

I switched to bing as my main search engine 3 days ago to test it out (I like the idea of having more than one search engine with significant market shares so I had to give it a try). Now it's true I hadn't search any content that triggered the filter in that time (I don't only think about that :-) ) but not long ago I was looking at what was the legality of having pornographic photos uploaded by users in a user generated content site and if it was better to filter them out systematically or wait for members to report such photos and those search wouldn't have worked on bing.

But as said, it's mostly an emotional argument on my part because I don't like companies to self-censor themselves when they could help the countries to become more opened..

I've also signed into Bing with a live account and didn't notice such a setting... maybe it's also disabled in Malaysia? Anyhow, I'm one of those strange people who block the google, bing and yahoo cookie because I don't really want search engines to have a complete history of my searches associated with my profile so this wouldn't be enough...

EDIT: Small fact in passing: while it blocks the english term 'sex', it doesn't block the malay word 'seks'... Strange now this term is also blocked??

How do you explain them blocking "sexual healing" in Germany?

That is a complete fuck up of the highest order IMHO.

There's an easy hack around that I just came up with while throwing terms at Bing and switching locales - just add a stop word (a word that search engines often ignore to conserve space) after the topic you're looking for and you can search for it.

In my case, I added "the"

EG, Sexual Healing in germany, search for "sexual healing the", and it comes up with what you're looking for.

I just tried "sex the" with India... searches just fine.

Basically, I'd suggest it's an unintended feature.

eg the blocking is both broken, and easily bypassed.

I never suggested it wasn't broken, I commented hours ago that some of the settings don't seem to be consistent.

Easily bypassed, well - that's just funny.

It is blocked in germany and in many other countries. Try searching for sex in bing.de

In the US version of the site you can change this setting in the preferences tab, but it doesn't seem to be available for India or many other countries for that matter. I think putting this setting in and making a link to the preferences on the block page would solve the problem for most people would it not?

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