Insidious manipulation of search engines; was Filters/Cybersitter, etc.

[Bob Duncan]

On April 25, 1997, Maxine M. Feinberg wrote:
>
>One of the issues we need to address, and, I believe, we have been 
>skirting, because it's thorny, is the insidious manipulation of search 
>engines by pornographers.  Instead of simply focusing on how to 
>parse search requests correctly, or theoretically musing about freedom 
>of information, we should be considering the very real prospect of 
>delivery of mis- or disinformation.  I agree that porn is not 
>

One of the nice things about the Internet is that it allows for
equal-opportunity "insidious manipulation of search engines" and
delivery of misinformation. While doing research (honest Ma) a
year or so ago on exactly how easy it might be for a kid to find
nudie sites, my simple search for +naked +women +pictures turned
up two separate sites which were totally lacking in content
appropriate to the search query: both were put together by
fundamentalist Christians who obviously thought I should be
thinking about other things instead. Possibly a more socially
acceptable use of deception, but no less insidious or
mis-informational than the dreaded "pornographers."

Now that I think about it, maybe this is the model we should
follow---every Web site could be required to have meta tags and
hidden text for both "sides" of whatever philosophy it touts so
every search will present users with the possibility of balanced
info. All search results for nudie pics will include religious
sites and all results for religion will include sites for nudie
pics too. From there each misguided searcher can decide what
they personally consider pornographic or obscene and make a
choice accordingly. Oops, sorry, I got carried away there; they
can already do that.

Bob Duncan

   '~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'
     Robert E. Duncan
     Reference/Instruction Librarian
     David Bishop Skillman Library
     Lafayette College
     Easton, PA  18042
     duncanr at lafayette.edu
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