The Dirty Bits & Bing

Technorati Tags: Bing,Microsoft,search engines,video search,inline preview,Charles Thrasher

The reason for the cry of alarm raised by the righteously indignant about Bing’s inline preview of pornographic video escapes me. Of course, pornographic video is bad. Categorically, irredeemably bad. Which begs the question why unambiguously pornographic searches are among the most popular on search engines. A whiff of hypocrisy lingers in the air rather like the smell of ozone after an electrical storm.

But the children. Certainly pornography is inappropriate for children? I agree that children are an inappropriate audience for pornography. It certainly stunted my growth. But why have the children disabled Bing’s Safe Search protections in order to preview porn on the SERP? (And what were they searching for in the first place?)

It’s a rhetorical question. We all know the reason why. It’s the same reason children lie when required to confirm their age on actual porn sites.

My point? Safeguards imposed by web publishers on adult content are ineffective. Other than parents fostering proper values in their children, there is no effective prevention short of removing adult content from the web entirely or secreting it behind paid admission. Given the traffic and the revenue generated by porn publishers, I don’t expect adult publishers to strike their tents and steal away anytime soon.

Although the dirty bits seem to have captured much of the media’s attention, the inline preview feature of Bing’s video search is impressive even when the content isn’t salacious. Consistent with Bing’s goal of simplifying search, it offers an efficient means of identifying content that’s most relevant to your search query.

And frankly, it’s a lot of fun.