'If you use a search engine to find things on the Internet, such as Google, you most likely have seen your share of online pictures and images that some might consider to be pornographic, whether you were actively searching for those images or not. Now it appears Google has decided to make some changes that, in theory, will make it harder for that kind of content to come up in a search on its site.
Forums and message boards such as Reddit were filled with posts by users earlier today who were having problems finding porno images via Google Image Search, even with the service's SafeSearch settings turned off. Some people accused Google of censorship.
CNet.com received a message from a Google rep which tried to explain the change:
We are not censoring any adult content, and want to show users exactly what they are looking for -- but we aim not to show sexually-explicit results unless a user is specifically searching for them. We use algorithms to select the most relevant results for a given query. If you're looking for adult content, you can find it without having to change the default setting -- you just may need to be more explicit in your query if your search terms are potentially ambiguous. The image search settings now work the same way as in Web search.
In other words, if you really want to find a particular pornographic picture, you have to be more specific from now on, rather than getting the result by typing in a more general search string on Google. We suspect that the people who really, really want to find porn will be able to get what they want without a whole lot of extra trouble.
Source: CNet.com | Image via Google
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