Fox News has come forward with criticisms of Microsoft's recently unveiled search engine Bing, claiming that it provides "a cornucopia of pornography" and that it is easy to transform "the search engine into [your] very own pornographic Web site."
Particularly troubling for Fox News is Bing's autoplay feature, which allows visitors to preview "explicit pornographic" (and other) videos without having to leave the search engine. Indeed, Fox News warns that this feature may have unforeseen consequences of a less than desirable nature, writing that it "may become a liability, because users can get a taste of porn videos on Bing instead of having to go to a smutty Web site--an innovation other search engines have yet to offer."
Fox News was alerted to this shocking state of affairs by blogger Loïc Le Meur, whose review of Bing's search capabilities includes the following caution: "[n]ow try sex in bing, deactivate safe search and go to video. You are now on a porn site without leaving bing. Amazing. No I won't link or publish a screenshot, you have to try for yourselves!"
Never mind that Bing allows users to set the search filter according to their individual preferences ("strict, moderate or simply off"), unnamed online safety advocates point out to Fox News that this is simply not doing enough to stop children getting easy access to porn "because the filters can be circumvented easily with just one click."
At the end of the day, unnamed Internet safety experts, according to Fox News, are deeply concerned about Microsoft's new search engine and warn that "[y]our kids may get a bang out of Bing--and that's not a good thing".
122 Comments - Add comment