News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Microsoft Bing not only shows child pornography, it sugge... by 0x8BADF00D on Thursday January 10, 2019 @03:46PM (#18877962)
It’s the old argument in favor of DRM and restrictive software licensing. “Think of the children” has long been used to prevent people from gaining access to warez and software cracks. As a famous man once said: “Software is like sex: it’s better when it’s free”
Re:Microsoft Bing not only shows child pornography, it sugge... by justizin on Thursday January 10, 2019 @06:47PM (#18879667)
what does anything you have to say have to do with child pornography?
Re:Microsoft Bing not only shows child pornography, it sugge... by pteraspidomorph on Thursday January 10, 2019 @08:25PM (#18880236)
The article seems purposefully designed to create a hysteria bubble. The subject is highly repugnant, and the associated emotional charge can be used to attack the target of the article (Microsoft), pressuring them towards an undesirable outcome.

1. "Google does it better than Bing"

Google unfortunately does it better than Bing by censoring all searches. It has been impossible to turn off safesearch on Google for many years (the "filter explicit results" setting only switches between soft and hard filtering). This has a positive outcome in this situation, but also greatly degrades the quality of available results in other cases.

2. Omegle?

The article mention Omegle's role very explicitly, however it reserves all of its vitriol for Microsoft specifically. Why? Omegle and the other platforms that are actually producing, hosting and facilitating the origination of this disgusting content should be the ones that have to get their shit together, or in some cases be persecuted. But Microsoft is a "juicier" target.

3 "even people not seeking this kind of disgusting imagery could be led to it"

They turned off SafeSearch, as clearly seen in the article's illustrative screenshot. This is a sleazy statement meant to whip people into a frenzy.

4. "Microsoft must" "human moderators" "underfunding" "another example of tech companies refusing (...)"

The article explicitly orders people, over and over, to be outraged, despite Microsoft's prompt and appropriate response, and makes assumptions that are unconfirmed or untrue.

TechCrunch's conduct here was not great - it seems to me like they handled the situation in such a way that showed their only aim was to attract clicks, rather than get the problem resolved promptly. It was tabloid behavior.