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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 16 2018, @01:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the NSFW-NSFW-NSFW-NSFW-NSFW-NSFW dept.

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Bing Is Suggesting the Worst Things You Can Imagine

If you use Bing’s image search, you’re going to see the worst filth you can imagine.  Bing suggests racist terms and shows horrifying images. Bing will even suggest you search for exploited children if you have SafeSearch disabled.

We contacted Microsoft for comment, and Jeff Jones, Senior Director at Microsoft, gave us the following statement:

“We take matters of offensive content very seriously and continue to enhance our systems to identify and prevent such content from appearing as a suggested search. As soon as we become aware of an issue, we take action to address it.”

Update: Since publication, Microsoft has been working on cleaning up the offensive Bing suggestions that we mentioned. Based on our research, there are still many other offensive suggestions that have not yet been fixed, including a few that we’ve mentioned below. We are unsure if they are simply fixing the offensive items we pointed out, or if they are improving the algorithm.

Note: The screenshots here show what we saw when we wrote this piece testing the US version of Bing Image search in an Incognito private browsing session, but Bing’s results shift over time. Google didn’t have any of these problems, according to our tests. This is a Bing problem, not just a search engine problem. The same problem affects Bing’s video search.

[...] Microsoft needs to moderate Bing better. Microsoft has previously created platforms, unleashed them on the world, and ignored them while they turned bad

We’ve seen this happen over and over. Microsoft once unleashed a chatbot named Tay on Twitter. This chatbot quickly turned into a Nazi and declared “Hitler was right I hate the jews” after it learned from other social media users. Microsoft had to pull it offline.

[...] Microsoft can’t just turn a platform loose on the world and ignore it. Companies like Microsoft and Google have a responsibility to moderate their platforms and keep the horror at bay.

Suggestions Have a History of Serious Problems

Of course, there’s no team of people at Microsoft choosing these suggestions. Bing automatically suggests searches based on other people’s searches. That means many Bing Images users are searching for antisemitism, racism, child pornography, and bestiality.

Please refer to TFA for actual search terms, suggested items, and images found.

Also at The Verge, BBC News


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday October 16 2018, @04:31PM

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 16 2018, @04:31PM (#749577) Journal

    I'm pretty sure they blocked the illegal content from actually showing up when you searched for it.

    Let's be careful and correct...

    Bing (or any search engine, method, or methodology) correctly saying that sites at particular addresses exist that contain or are likely to contain forbidden material is not illegal in any way.

    A site itself containing forbidden material is illegal in the jurisdiction(s) where the material is forbidden.

    Merely saying that "So and so and such and such address is breaking the law" isn't illegal--and shouldn't be--whether so and so is a person, business, or website. If it were, newspapers and radio/television news would be discontinued forthwith. A free press, whether you like it or not (you know who you are), is important for a free society, and for that to exist, merely stating facts is and must remain not just legal but expressly encouraged.

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