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Google will blur explicit image results for all users, requires login to disable
- hsuduebc2 4y agoOh great. Another corporation which wants to know when I jerk off without at least a little bit of of effort to hide it.
- cypress66 4y agoIt seems like this will widen the gap with Bing, which is already superior for adult content.
- iosono88 4y ago[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mdrzn 4y agoWhen you use Chrome you're always logged in, so it's not a big difference (for me). Let's see how Bing gets marketshare back.
- cypress66 4y agoNot in incognito
- LarryMullins 4y ago> When you use Chrome you're always logged in, Only if you have an account and choose to log in with it..
- cesarb 4y ago> Only if you have an account and choose to log in with it.. Didn't Chrome automatically log you in to Google sites if you accessed them while logged in to Chrome?
- rzzzt 4y agoIt used to, they added a toggle switch for it after getting wind of some discontentment. It's still on by default, IIRC: https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/how-to-stop-chrome-from-automatically-signing-you-into-the-browser/ https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/how-to-stop-chrome-from-automa...
- wmeredith 4y agoThis is false on its face. You do not have to be logged in to anything to use Chrome.
- croes 4y agoI'm not. Tracked but not logged in.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- whywhywhywhy 4y agoYandex completely destroys Google in image search and especially reverse image search anyway. Even though using it feels almost exactly like Google Image Search was 10+ years ago, it's just that product is way better than today's Google Image Search.
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y agoSwitch to Tin-Eye search.
- knaik94 4y agoThat's not a solution, tin-eye is a reverse image search tool. This is affecting all image search results on google. I do use Tin-eye and have found it only useful for finding larger dimension relatively exact matches. It can handle crop and color filters but not much more. Yandex reverse image search is currently the only useful reverse image search left that can do fuzzy matching. Like if I reverse image search a picture of a cathedral I took, it'll find other pictures of the same cathedral, even taken from different angles. Google and Bing used to be great, Google's is terrible when you include a human subject in the picture, and Bing is very very inconsistent. I have had times where I reverse image a picture and Bing finds nothing except ones a little bigger in dimension, but then I search using one of the bigger ones and it finds similar pictures like expected. It's literally the same picture, just cropped less, no color filters or watermarks.
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y agoYou can use url's of images found on google/bing to further refine Tin-Eye search results.
- knaik94 4y agoOn desktop most browsers have extensions that restore and augment the image search functionality. You can install one of them and not really have to worry about urls. From my knowledge, "find other sizes" is available on every reverse search service. I think Tin-Eye needs to update their interface a little, because it's better able to find the biggest image available online. But I have been running into a lot of dead links on when I search for something. I have to click like through 4 to 5 links before I find a working one, if I find a working one at all. I'm not sure how often they update their db.
- iggldiggl 4y ago
- cptcobalt 4y agoThis is nothing short of puritanistic surveillance state bullshit. It's censorship, and is not okay. On by default is ok—encouraged, even. Login required? heck no. (edit: ugh, what if this is just because they're avoiding cookies to store this? because of "privacy")
- anonymouskimmer 4y agoOh FFS. Read the article. The image is blurred, but if you click through it's not. So this basically just resorts image search for NSFL and NSFW images back to text links. Unless you log in to enable image links.
- cptcobalt 4y agoI did read the article, and I do think the we both understood the interaction impact similarly—yeah, you can click to unblur an image, but you can't change the global preference without the login. Requiring a login to change a preference rather than something that could be stored in a very simple cookie deanonymizes you, and creates an extremely clean audit trail of your usage patterns. There's far more friction in making scores of google burner accounts than it is to rotate VPNs and Incognito windows, if you're so inclined to obfuscate your trail. That's bad.
- giantg2 4y ago"Requiring a login to change a preference rather than something that could be stored in a very simple cookie deanonymizes you," Of course. That's basically step 1 in every proposed plan to prevent minors from accessing porn on the internet. Step 2 is verify age and linking it to the account.
- gjsman-1000 4y agoIf there is no shame in using porn, and nobody cares, you have nothing to fear™.
- NHQ 4y agoWhat are some better image search sites?
- whstl 4y agoDuckDuckGo image search has been working better than Google Images for me, for some time now.
- CSMastermind 4y agoUnironically Bing is significantly better than Google at image and video search. It's geospatial where Google really shines.
- iggldiggl 4y ago> Bing is significantly better than Google at image [...] search I'd say it depends. It certainly has its strengths, and I have definitively encountered (image) searches where Bing's results where noticeably superior to Google's, but one area where for me Google shines and Bing fails is the ability to search for "site:example.com keyword" and as long as the search keyword in question is recognised by Google's image recognition pipeline, it'll return search results not just based on the classic "index nearby text and hope it's somehow related to the pictures" method, but also based on the actual image contents themselves. With Bing either they don't do that kind of image recognition at all, or maybe it just doesn't work as well in conjunction with the site:-operator, or maybe its image recognition simply has a much more limited vocabulary as compared to Google (at least for the things I'm interested in) – in any case that kind of search for me simply works much better with Google.
- knaik94 4y agoYandex. There is nothing that comes close for reverse image searching by a mile. It even has the same feature as bing where you can just copy paste the picture itself, no need to mess with urls. Bing is decent but reverse image is failing the same way Google's is. And Bing recently introduced the obnoxious full screen UI where it gives you products it found in the picture instead of doing a real reverse image search.
- post_break 4y agoDoes everyone know that Bing is the place to go for those types of images or videos? Honestly this is getting to the point where my most used search engines are DDG and Bing. What a thing to say.
- themitigating 4y agoBing also censors explicit results by default but you can change the setting with a cookie
- cykros 4y agoMost actual adult sites also blur themselves if not keep you out until you set a cookie too, and frankly this is much more appropriate. I don't want to be at work, looking for a picture of, say, a banana, and inadvertently getting... "creative" pictures. Remember, everything is a dildo if you're brave enough.
- LorenPechtel 4y agoI really wish it would become part of the browser standards. It shouldn't be tied to an account, but to the machine and easily switchable (and, ideally, auto-switch based on the network you are connected to.) No possible shoulder surfers, send whatever. Same machine, office network, I want Safe Search on.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago> Google turned on SafeSearch as its default for under-18 users in August 2021, having been pressured by Congress to better protect children across its services, including search and YouTube. This is basically an end around the First Amendment. While the government is not allowed to ban speech, so it pressures corporations to ban speech on its behalf, with an implied threat they will will hurt the corporation in some way if it does not comply.
- wang_li 4y ago>so it pressures corporations to ban speech on its behalf, with an implied threat they will will hurt the corporation in some way if it does not comply. Which is not actually legal. It's been found repeatedly in court that the government can't work hand in glove with a third party to violate civil rights. Otherwise the FBI would work hand in glove with third parties to beat people with rubber hoses until they confess.
- DamnInteresting 4y ago> Which is not actually legal. Perhaps so, but the legality of an action is immaterial if it is left unprosecuted.
- leeroyjenkins11 4y agoBut showing adult content to minors is illegal already. If a minor tries to buy that content in a store, the store owner would be violating the by selling it. Why is the internet different? It's also illegal for an adult to give that material to a minor, even if a minor asked for it. Because Google is a corporation, are they not required to obey the law?
- charcircuit 4y agoA law already existing doesn't make something okay.
- LorenPechtel 4y agoNote that Safe Search would exclude any visuals that would get a movie an R rating--but it's legal for parents to allow their children to see R rated movies. (And note that there's a grey area where there's stuff that's NC-17 but really contains nothing farther than an R, but either more of it or homosexual rather than heterosexual.) And I recently ran into a tidbit about the rules in Australia: Detailed pictures of female genitalia are automatically 18+, even if the purpose is educational in showing girls the range of normal genitalia to show them that theirs is normal.
- jeffwask 4y agoGoogle search has been going the way of Yahoo, Alta Vista, Excite, Hotbot... for a while. More junk results, more paid junk content, more work flow breaking changes, can't copy, copy a url returns a google nightmare soup url, etc...less and less customer friendly every day. It's time for a new king. Been mostly using DDG but excited to start fooling around with the new Bing. If you told 2013 me I would be binging in 2023 I would have not believed you.
- danjoredd 4y agoYeah, outside of just habit, I am not entirely sure why someone would still be sticking to Google. I am using Brave Search, and its results are just as good as Google's. I am planning on running my own searx instance at some point to run it all myself before long
- aaaronic 4y agoWon't the new Bing be used by DDG? I thought DDG was on top of Bing already.
- 8note 4y agoThey use the bing index at least
- anonymouskimmer 4y agoWhack-a-mole. The SEO-bots will be after Bing and ChatGPT soon enough.
- jeffwask 4y agoIt's not just SEO and bots. It's deliberate choice in how they develop the application and what features they are adding. Every feature they have added in the last few years has been user hostile.
- mos_basik 4y agoBought a Kagi sub in January after hearing about it on HN for a few months and I've been loving it. Was content DDG user for the past few years just to slip the Google leash, but the Kagi results are A+; definitely prefer to DDG. Edit: Though ofc for Kagi, one needs to be logged in for all searches, not just NSFW image searches. :)
- jchw 4y agoI'm surprised at the cataclysmic response here. I do hate puritanical stuff, but this doesn't seem that bad. I do worry that eventually they'll force people to log in to even see this content eventually, and that'll just be a sad day for the Internet. But just blurring it seems... ok? For me it's a far better setting than "On" even though I'd greatly prefer "Off". Well, I guess it would be annoying if you were browsing only explicit images, like porn. But, at the risk of sounding crazy, I figured people had moved onto topic-specific sites for that kind of thing.
- Zak 4y agoWhen people are browsing explicit images, whether medical or pornographic is often when they most want to be anonymous online.
- gjsman-1000 4y agoInteresting how so many people can do it, and yet there's still a very strong stigma. You'll find more people saying they are LGBTQ+ than proud porn users.
- Spivak 4y agoThe term you're looking for is sex positive and plenty of people self-identify that way.
- danjoredd 4y agoI don't mind them blurring it. Its not really a problem. Heaven knows how many kids ended up with a porn addiction because Google displayed something that lead them down a rabbit hole. If that sort of addiction can be lessened by blurring images so they don't see them right away, I view it as a good thing. Of course, all the kid has to do is click on it then unblur it so its effectiveness is in question. Not to mention it does nothing to reduce the other routes porn addiction can be introduced. However, despite all that, I DO have a problem with them requiring a login to disable the feature. It feels like a grab for more data. A way to get people to log in and let them attribute NSFW searches to an account. Google wants to know pretty much every part of you so they can sell you things...that includes adult services and objects. If they can nail what your fetish is, they can advertise to you stuff related to it.
- dbrueck 4y agoSome late night TV show (Jimmy Kimmel maybe?) used to have a recurring bit where they'd find an innocuous photo and then blur out parts of it in a way that suggested that the original was naughty. I can't remember more so I couldn't find a link to any examples, but I can't wait for somebody to set up a Twitter account documenting Google's unintentionally funny false positive blurs.
- Scoundreller 4y agoSounds like a “the man show” bit. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Show https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Show
- kotaKat 4y agoI believe Kimmel's bit is "This Week in Unnecessary Censorship" where they bleeped and blurred various TV show segments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJVjuJHqR7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJVjuJHqR7U [censored nsfw, obviously]
- dbrueck 4y agoYeah, that was it. Thank you!
- professorplumb 4y agoI've always considered this video the canonical example of intentionally misleading censorship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AXPnH0C9UA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AXPnH0C9UA
- tzs 4y agoThe is reminiscent of "Mormon Bubbling" [1]. Click the image gallery link on that page for a whole lot of examples, some of which are quite convincing. [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mormon-porn-bubble-porn https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/mormon-porn-bubble-porn
- torartc 4y agoI would have thought this was already the default behavior.
- StevenNunez 4y agoAny tips on how to divorce yourself from google? I've got too many eggs in their basket.
- binarysaurus 4y agoAre you just wanting to de-google or take control of your data in general? Search: SearXNG [public instance/self-hosted], startpage.com, etc. GMail: Proton Mail, Tutanota Calendar/Contacts/Docs/Drive/Meet/Photos: Nextcloud [self-hosted] Android: Google Pixel with GrapheneOS Maps: OSM, OSMAND+ for mobile GPS
- sandstrom 4y agoThe proton family of tools is pretty good: https://proton.me/ https://proton.me/ Apple, with their recent end-to-end encryption for iCloud ("Advanced Protection") is also an option. For search the primary alternative, apart from Bing, would be DuckDuckGo obviously.
- ticviking 4y agoI mostly degoogled about 6 years ago. Focus on what you use the most, and would least like them to take away and find 1 acceptable alternative. Move that. Repeat. Eventually you will be forced to accept either some losses(getting everything out of google docs), a long chore, or some google use.
- bilsbie 4y agoWhen did technology take such a wrong turn?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- knaik94 4y agoI don't want my account to be tied with my adult entertainment search history. This is the underlying issue that deeply concerns me. Companies are allowed to make whatever stance they want on how they handle mature content. But this forces people to stay logged in. Theoretically the two options are either use another service or make a burner Google account just for porn. I know Bing has a habit of making moderation policies similar to Google about things like this. Bing is better for porn and unfiltered results, but it has been becoming worse in the last few years. It's similar to how reverse image search with Bing was even more amazing than Google, but now they're equally terrible because they're doing the same kind of filtering on the backend. Having to make an account means that account information can be used to track users across the internet. With incognito, at least it was basically a "new" account every time. Edit: It's possible that this is related to the new Louisiana law requiring people use a digital driver's id wallet app to verify their age in order to use Pornhub. Discussed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34260167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34260167 https://mashable.com/article/pornhub-louisiana-id https://mashable.com/article/pornhub-louisiana-id
- chias 4y agoIs Google Image Search really a significant component in many people's adult entertainment process? If so, gosh, that's like a step up from using Wikipedia, but not a very big step.
- knaik94 4y agoYes it is, I think it's unfair to dismiss literally the biggest search platform in the world. The image search tab isn't the destination, it can be, but it's also easy to find video thumbnails that take you to somewhere you can watch things or download things. It's also a very powerful search tool for Tumblr blogs. I enjoy reading stories as well and so Google Search as a whole plays a big part. I have found alternatives, but there's a reason Google stays at the top despite these kinds of decisions. This kind of move makes me wonder when text results will also become locked down. It's now a question of when, not if.
- 4y ago
- tinus_hn 4y agoClever, and when people complain they can just point to their democratically elected representatives with their ID demands ‘to protect the children’.
- 48snickers 4y agoWith the passing of the Age Appropriate Design Code (AADC) in the UK and the California Age Appropriate Design Code expect to see this is a general design pattern across the internet. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/ico-codes-of-practice/age-appropriate-design-code/#:~:text=The%20Children's%20code%20(or%20the,to%20protect%20children's%20data%20online https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio.... https://californiaaadc.com/ https://californiaaadc.com/
- badwolf 4y agoI imagine this is in response to the recent Louisiana law that requires a website to verify a user's ID/Driver's license before showing any explicit content. related discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34236632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34236632
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- LinAGKar 4y agoDoes this mean they'll stop blocking those results?
- mock-possum 4y agoHey remember when google's motto was 'do no evil?' You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
- Awelton 4y agoEveryone uses bing for that anyway.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- YvvNbaw0man 4y ago[dead]