Porn Scum Stoop Ever Lower

This morning my daughter was having a look around for some pictures of medieval castle’s on Google Images. She’s six and a half.

My Wife was sitting with her while she browsed the index, and as the results looked quite reasonable, she left the room to let her browse around the search results.

Next thing, our daughter was calling out that she didn’t like what was on the screen – and seeing what was there, no wonder. It was a porn site.

The link that got her to it? coolest-kid-birthday-parties.shippony.com with, as you can see from the screen capture, a picture of children at a party (complete with medieval sword).

These disgusting porn peddlers had deliberately high-jacked a totally innocent image and URL to take viewers to their porn – clearly not what they were looking for.

You’ll note that the Goggle Moderate SafeSearch Was On

What’s to be done?
Now, as you know, we’re strong advocates of free speech, but this has nothing to do with free speech. It’s a deliberate deceit.

I’m not advocating the removal of this content from their servers, or shutting them down. Just that there should be tools to have this kind of thing removed from the view of children – or those who have expressed that they don’t want to be exposed to it.

I’m sure this morning episode isn’t a one off. Google would do well add the ability to mark images, or what they link to, as inappropriate or deceptive – directly on the search result page.

Longer term
I have for a long time thought it would be a good idea to have a plug-in for Web browsers that, through a social network scheme, would warn you of site that you really didn’t want to visit during your random browsings online.

People within your network often have very similar moral tastes to you.

If you clicked to a site that someone in your network had labelled as ‘not advisable’, you’d receive a message giving you guidance of this. You’d then have the option to continue or take their advice.

Similarly if you found a page that you thought was really too much, you’d be able to mark it as such – aiding your friends in avoiding it.

Think of it as social censorship.

I’d originally though of this as a tool to deal with very extreme porn or graphic images, but after today’s experience, perhaps this is an idea that could be extended to different user groups, each with their own level content acceptance.