Friday, June 23, 2006

Ask Blocks Search for "Pedophilia"

Ask.com is censoring result pages in a search for the word “pedophilia“*, Ionut of the Google System blog reports. Variants of this word also won’t show results, including e.g. the search “fighting pedophile abuse” or “laws on child sex abuse”. Instead of search results, you’ll get a message reading, “This query does not comply with Ask.com Terms of Service.”

On Google.com, for example, the same search for “pedophilia” results in Wikipedia’s page on pedophilia, and a “Fight Pedophilia” page. Pedophilia isn’t the only topic censored on Ask. Other queries that won’t give results are e.g. bestiality and necrophilia. Too bad Ask.com deems these words taboo for any kind of research.

(Disclosure: Ask advertises on this blog.)

*The two censored search types are (at least) web search and images, whereas e.g. Ask’s news or shopping search engines don’t block these words. This is not “adult” filtering, which appears differently and can be disabled, e.g. for a search for “coping with rape”.

Ask Blocks Search for "Pe ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (25)

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