

Bing censors sexual & LGBT content in Arab nations - nir
http://opennet.net/sex-social-mores-and-keyword-filtering-microsoft-bing-arabian-countries

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wheels
Different default safe-search settings per region makes total sense as moral
sensibilities vary significantly (for example, in parts of Europe, nudity is
commonly used in normal advertising, which wouldn't fly in the US), however,
what seems offensive with this is that it seems you are not _allowed_ to
switch safe search off.

I wonder if disabling such is as simple as switching the region setting or if
it's region coded when accessed from those countries.

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CWuestefeld
What content is censored in USA and other "free" countries?

I mean, it's not that we just get the full firehose here, and other countries
are variously prudish. In America we do filter things especially for child
porn, and also for various other illegal topics (especially intellectual
property).

Before you jump on me and say that we're just protecting children (or whoever
the victims of other censored crimes are), please consider how well the actual
legalities map to actual objective harms, or even to community-accepted
morals.

I assert that we're still subject to a non-trivial degree of censorship in
America, and the boundaries of that censorship map very poorly to an objective
harms, and only approximately to any morality that's pervasive through our
culture.

So any argument against filtering for the laws and culture in other parts of
the world can't just be "censorship is wrong", because then you indict our own
rules as well. It's a much more complex question.

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yannis
In all these countries as soon as you try to connect to a website where nudity
or other banned content is displayed the mighty filter will divert you to a
screen telling you that the website displays prohibited material - Bing
settings or no Bing settings. The actual search engine you use is immaterial
and this is just a gimmick by Microsoft. Most people find this very annoying
and would use https vtunnel or something similar :)

 _disclosure_ : Currently in Qatar

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scorpioxy
True.

I live in Lebanon, and we have no such filter. It is the most liberal of Arab
nations(some even say it isn't an Arab nation). Nudity in media is frowned
upon, but we have a crazy night life that even I think is extreme sometimes.
Go figure...

Anyway, for the people it matters to, they quickly learn how to avoid such
filters. Otherwise, you can get whatever you want from the bittorrent trackers
which aren't banned.

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mahmud
I couldn't agree more. Lebanon, specially Beirut, is utterly sleazy and one
vacation I will happily take back. There isn't much "organic" nightlife there;
if you want to rub shoulders with juiced up muscle heads and trafficked
prostitutes, Beirut is the place to be. For casual middle-eastern night life
you're probably better off in Damascus, Cairo, Tunis, or Amman.

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alexandros
What google leaves on the table due to principles, a marketshare-only oriented
competitor will definitely jump at. What's best in the long term remains to be
seen. While I personally prefer companies with a personality because it gives
me a feeling of a longer term vision, it could be considered condescending to
enforce your morals on a market that in majority is averse to specific
content.

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cmelbye
How is it condescending to choose to not censor content? If someone is averse
to specific content, then they shouldn't search for it. Easy as that. They're
able to make decisions for themselves.

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fiaz
Shouldn't come as a surprise really. Most Arab nations oppress expressions of
sexuality, and freedom of speech as a basic right is nonexistent.

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mingdingo
Can't you have multiple wives in some Arab nations?

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vkdelta
How is this related to the above comment?

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vkdelta
Actually it does not matter if Bing filters the content or not. All (almost)
of users' traffic goes through a ISP's proxy server. They have semi-
intelligent method to filter the content. At least it used to work like this 5
years back.

Sure times have changed but I assume they are still using same/similar methods
to filter. As kids, we coded our proxy servers running on servers like
Geocities using open-source perl scripts but they ended up blocking it every
now and then. Times have changed, they still maintain their ........

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bediger
What did anyone expect from "Bing"? They claim to be a "decision engine", and
at least in the commercials I've seen, they don't say that the users get to
make the decisions.

Disclaimer: I've only used "Bing" twice myself.

