interesting, but I'm a bit confused: are the "badware warnings" integrated into all serps? I've never seen this. if that's the case, anyone have a sample link? or is it just an addon/plugin/etc that modifies the google pages returned on the client's side?
Thanks for the great post. Just when I got out of the sandbox now I have to worry about badware which I really dont understand how it works. I will be watching this post for more input thanks again Minstrel.
Website Guidelines More information including lists of current BadWare sites in the depository can be found at http://www.stopbadware.org/home/guidelines. It seems this is sponsored by Google rather than a Google project per se. The index of Badware sites is searchable on the Badware.org site.
I've seen these warnings before notifying me they may contain spyware harmful to my pc and so on, I think its a nice idea as long as websites that aren't legitimate aren't effected
anyone who hasn't seen it yet put seriall.com/m/8 into google then click on the only result and there you have it
Interesting - there doesn't seem to be a link to move forward from the interstitial - or did I miss it?
One of the reason why Google is still on top by innovating their products and services for the welfare of the humankind. Cheers! Thanks for the heads up minstrel.
I don't know if I like it or not. It is getting more and more Big Brother/Big Daddy is watching over you. After badware? What's next? Psychology? Hiking sites? "Hey, this hiking site might be dangerous to your health. Are you sure you want to visit it?"
We are not talking about banning sites. We are talking about alerting people to the likely presence of either malware or piracy. I don't buy the "free speech" argument when it comes to pointing the finger at crime or intent to harm. My preference would be to extend this to pro-pedophile, pro-anorexia, pro-self-injury, and pro-suicide sites too. They do no-one any good and they do demonstrable harm to vulnerable people. See Mandated Social Responsibility on the Net.
extend it meaning what? bar said sites from the index, or give some sort of warning inside the serps? a lot of what you mentioned is subject to debate as well. what one person sees as a "pro-pedophile" or "pro-anorexia" site may not come off that way to others. it seems like a way to censor views-- some that are harmful, yes, but some that aren't. I personally really don't like the idea of someone restricting my access to information because it may be harmful to me. it's subject to too much abuse. what one person sees as harmful isn't harmful in the eyes of others. if google ever did go down that route, I'd expect (and sure hope for) an extreme public outcry against the move.
Do your homework, disgust. Read my blogs on the subject and my comments in threads here. There is no question of subjectivity about these sites. The only question is whether it is defensible to list them in DMOZ or elsewhere in the name of "free speech". As for "extend it", I'm talking about the topic in this thread - I thought that was obvious.
I did read your blog posts, and I've read your threads made on DP about the subject before. the reason I questioned what you meant by "extend it" was simply because a warning embedded in the serps would seem... very odd. "the text on this website may be detrimental to your mental or physical health"? that seems incredibly bizarre to me. and really, google is "promoting" these sites just as much as dmoz was supposedely "promoting" them. if your stance was that they shouldn't be reachable via dmoz's site, it'd make sense to extend the same logic to google. adware, spyware, etc, have clear, definite definitions. what sites may be harmful to your mental or physical health are much more subjective, I don't see how anyone can even try to argue that it isn't. the fact that we have opposite stances on this is pretty much evidence of such.
Tell me how sites which tell people how to kill themselves or to starve themselves to death can possibly be considered other than harmful, please.
I've known people involved in both types of sites. they're not always what they look like from the outside. some sites pidgeon-holed as "pro-suicide" or "pro-anorexia" are in reality nothing of the sort. more often than not, they're simply non-judgmental groups of people dealing with the same issues. if someone has self-injury problems, they may want to talk with someone that doesn't instantly react by telling them that they need to stop what they're doing now. relating to people in the same situation can be a good thing. it still boils down to who gets to decide what types of sites are harmful. it wasn't long ago that homosexuality was associated with extreme health risks out of ignorance. do you really want to live in a world where groups of people could be censored because of that sort of thing? what about sites that give information about sex to teenagers? I'm guessing you don't find that harmful, but a lot of people out there certainly do. part of freedom means allowing people to say things you may happen to disagree with. regardless, it won't be a road google will be going down. recently google got some bad press for refusing to delete blogs by self-proclaimed pedophiles-- the blogs contained no illegal material at all, but people were outraged that google was giving these people a chance to talk. personally I was pretty damn impressed with their stance; they're willing to take bad publicity for the sake of protecting freedom of speech.
You've never had to deal with someone who has been a victim of one of those pedophiles, have you? This is NOT, repeat NOT about freedom of speech. Re-read my posts on that topic. Every freedom in a civilized society has limits and those limits start where the "freedom" begins to hurt innocent people. Defending the right of free speech to enable pedophiles to create new child rape victims is not a noble act - is called "aiding and abetting a criminal act", and an abhorrent criminal act at that.