Saturday, January 16, 2010

Re: Google Blocks Site Containing Disparaging Joke About Kevin Rudd

Back in October 2008, a correspondent reported that a Google search for "Kevin Rudd" produced a Google result set that included some filtered results.

I was intrigued by this and wondered whether it might be possible to use Google to discover more about the contents of the page. I documented what I discovered in this post: "Google Blocks Site Containing Disparaging Joke About Kevin Rudd"

In light of the recent news that Google had decided to filter out a search result containing a link to a page on Encyclopedia Dramatica that allegedly contained racist remarks about Aborigines, I decided to see what the Google search I performed back in 2008 revealed.

Interestingly the result set for "Kevin Rudd is a bureaucratic" contains two forum posts neither of which are now blocked. One from a site called Chess Chat and another from a site called Let's talk dirty

What's interesting is that the post on "Let's talk dirty" dates from around 12 October 2008, which was a about a week before my investigations started. When I visited the site today, it contained banner ads linking to sites that offered incest material. I note, however, that the moderation guidelines for the site itself which were last revised on 23 April 2009 exclude material that roughly correspond to the Australian Refused Classification criteria.

Given the apparent nature of the "Let's Talk Dirty" site, and the close correspondence of dates, it seems at least plausible that it was "Let's Talk Dirty" that was the subject of the October 2008 results set filtering performed by Google.