In other words, Google Glass will not let you say whatever you want, and if this is really the future of how we interact with the Internet on a daily basis, that could be a problem.

Should Google be dictating what people can and cannot say? Let us know what you think in the comments.

On the surface, this may not seem like a huge deal. Right now, only a few people even have the device, and there’s no telling if it will even be successful or simply just something we’ll all be laughing back at a few years from now. Either way, this is a Google product, and Google is how an incredibly large number of people retrieve information and communicate with others.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Google get a little stricter on what is acceptable behavior from its users in recent memory. Late last year, Google stopped letting users disable SafeSearch in the US, making some queries less relevant as a result. Users were outraged, as shown by the comments we received on our coverage of the story. Earlier this year, we confirmed with Google that the changes had rolled out to more countries.

Essentially, Google took away the filter that gave users more control over what they would see. That adult content is still out there, but Google made it harder to find, making users get more descriptive with their keywords.

Here’s what they said about it: “We are not censoring any adult content, and want to show users exactly what they are looking for — but we aim not to show sexually-explicit results unless a user is specifically searching for them. We use algorithms to select the most relevant results for a given query. If you’re looking for adult content, you can find it without having to change the default setting — you just may need to be more explicit in your query if your search terms are potentially ambiguous. The image search settings work the same way as in web search.”

Adult content is one thing. Now, they’re simply censoring speech. Given that users won’t be typing on Google Glass, they’re making it a great deal harder to say the words you actually want to say, whether you’re searching or trying to have a conversation with a friend.

As Geek.com (who first reported on this) pointed out, this is also the case for Google’s voice feature on Android. In fact, it’s the same for the desktop voice search experience. Have you tried to voice search a dirty word from your computer lately? It looks something like this:

But it’s probably more likely that you would just type your query from your PC. On a smartphone, tablet or desktop computer, users can simply type what they actually want to say. Why does Google let you type it, but feel the need to censor it when you say it out loud? What’s the point? I’m sure you can imagine the outrage if Google started censoring what you type. What’s the difference? For a device like Glass, which relies on speech (as would a possibly forthcoming smart watch, I would imagine), the default experience is censored.

One interesting angle to all of this is that Google is starting to draw criticism for having a “puritanical” approach to users, similar to that of Apple’s App Store, though you can still find plenty of adult-themed apps in Google Play.

There’s no real consistency to Google’s censorship practices. It will be interesting to see if things change significantly in Google Play.

I have to wonder if Microsoft is busy crafting its next “Scroogled” campaign. As we’ve seen, Bing sometimes goes out of its way to suggest particularly objectionable content (though it looks like they’ve cleaned up things a bit since the linked report was written).

We’ve reached out to Google for comment on its voice censoring, and so far have not received a response.

By the way, taking pictures in the shower with Google Glass is apparently okay.

Is Google right to censor speech with its voice-to-text input? Would you be okay if they did the same thing with just text input? Is the fact that they don’t do this with text input a double standard? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Lead image: Google co-founder Sergey Brin wearing Google Glass on the subway.

And that’s exactly what has happened today. Starting today, Pakistan’s largest provider of cellular services has announced that its prepaid customers can tweet away – for free.

“Data charges for accessing Twitter have been made ZERO for all Mobilink prepaid subscribers. Subscribers don’t require to subscribe to this offer since it is available for all prepaid subscribers by default,” says Mobilink.

That means that users can tweet and retweet all they want without incurring any data charges. This removes one of the impediments from Pakistani Twitter users, who have faced state censorship of Twitter in the past.

#Mobilink prepaid customers can now access #Twitter for free! For details visit goo.gl/HRY15

— Simply Mobilink (@SimplyMobilink) April 2, 2013

Back in May of 2012, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority shut off Twitter access for the entire country for approximately 8 hours following the circulation of content deemed blasphemous on the network. Some speculated that the move had less to do with the specific content and more to do with a simple test as to whether a state-wide blockage was feasible.

As far as the rest of the internet goes, the Pakistani government has a history of censorship in the areas of so-called blasphemy and pornography. Recently, that censorship has moved to content that falls in the realm of political speech. In a country with this track record, free access to Twitter is a significant opportunity for its people – considering access remains open.

There are some caveats to the deal. Mainly, tweets must be sent via mobile.twitter.com – not Twitter’s native apps.

Also:

“[G]oing on external links will result in data charging. Whenever a subscriber clicks on an external link, he will be shown a notification indicating that standard data charges apply to view the link. External link will be opened after subscriber’s consent only.”

But for the purposes of simply communicating (being that all-important amateur reporter), this is a great thing for Pakistani tweeters.

Various petitions were immediately started, including some at Change.org. One of them is already nearing 130,000 supporters. There seems to be a common misconception that only journalists, bloggers, and techies are really using RSS anyway, but as signatures on the petitions indicate, that’s not necessarily the case.

“Looks like there’s a dark side to the Google Reader story,” a spokesperson from Change.org tells WebProNews. “People living under repressive regimes use the service to access information untouched by government censors. If Google Reader goes, they say, so will uncensored news and views from around the world.”

We saw some reports to this effect last week, specifically about Iran, but, Change.org is sharing some interesting stats about its signatures. For example, 75% of Google Reader petition signatures on Change.org came from outside the U.S. 12% of signatures came from people living within countries that Reporters Without Borders and/or the OpenNet Initiative report have active internet censorship by government forces, the spokesperson says.

“At least 2% of signatures came from people living in countries that Reporters Without Borders calls ‘Enemies of the Internet’ – a moniker earned ‘not just for their capacity to censor news and information online but also for their almost systematic repression of Internet users.’” she says.

Here are a few sample comments from the biggest petition:

“Google Reader is important as dinner to me. Since Great Fire Wall blocks infomations between China and others, Reader is the best way to get uncensored news.” – petition signer in China

“There was a time that reader was my only way to keep my self update with the censored internet of Iran.” – petition signer in Iran

Feedly revealed on Friday that it had already signed up over 500,000 Google Reader users since Google made the announcement. And that was three days ago.

Yesterday afternoon, Vine began to block certain porn-related tag searches. Trying to search for #porn? Sorry, you’re out of luck. What about more specific tags like #dick, #ass, or #boobs? Yep, out of luck.

But there were still a few workarounds. Mainly, some porn-related tags still existed – #NSFW and #pornvine, for instance.

Now it appears that Vine has really cleaned house and purged most of the porn from the app. #NSFW is no longer accessible, and #pornvine is no more. Any tag search of any common sexual terms yields no tag results containing porn. It looks like Vine has made it much, much harder to find porn on the app.

We also noticed that Vine has removed the ability to view “all videos” from the Explore tab. Now, you can only choose between SFW tags, “Editor’s Picks,” and “Popular Now.”

It’s important to note that Vine hasn’t amended their Terms of Service or anything. Technically, nudity and sexual content is still allowed on the service. But the restrictions on tag searches make it nearly impossible to find porn on the app. The old trick of spring-boarding from one NSFW tag search to another by clicking tags is no longer an option. I was able to upload a video with the #porn and #nsfw tags, but when I attempted to click them to find other content with those tags Vine told me they couldn’t load the posts.

It looks like Vine and porn have ended their short relationship. At least their truly visible relationship.

But that doesn’t mean that users can’t still upload explicit videos and share them to Twitter. But they’re going to be incredibly hard to find on the actual Vine app, unless someone is specifically looking for them by username. I was able to find porn by searching for specific user names, but that’s about it. No porn in the Editor’s picks, no porn in the “popular now” section.

What Vine has done is make it pretty hard to just stumble upon porn when using the app.

No longer can you search for the tags #porn, #boobs, #dick, #sex and many other NSFW tags.

Oddly enough, you can still search for the #NSFW tag.

Also available are more specific tags that contain plenty of nudity such as #pornvine, #dicks, and more. It appears that Vine is just beginning the process of censoring these types of tags. Before it’s said and done, it’s unlikely that any of these kinds of porn-related tags will remain. And Vine will probably censor any new porn tags as soon as they pop up.

What users can do, however, is tag their Vine videos with these tags. Users can still access the tag pages by clicking on the tags under videos they do find. So there’s a workaround – for now. Still, many popular NSFW tags no longer appear when users try to explore them.

It appears that there had already been a small change in Apple’s promotion of Vine inside the App Store which was conspicuously timed with this porn controversy.

For more on the Vine-porn controversy, check out our in-depth writeup.

And now that 2012 is winding down, Kimmel has just released the year-end wrap up of one of his best segments. Here it is, “This Year in Unnecessary Censorship”:

In other news, I really need to start watching Judge Judy.

TorrentFreak reports that Google has quietly rolled out a new feature in its transparency reports that details how many false DMCA takedown requests it receives from copyright holders. Google details these false requests in a newly updated FAQ:

From time to time, we may receive inaccurate or unjustified copyright removal requests for search results that clearly do not link to infringing content. An independent, third-party analysis of how frequently improper and abusive removal requests are submitted was conducted in 2006.

Google then lists a number of examples of where copyright holders submitted false DMCA takedown requests. Here’s some of the better ones:

A U.S. reporting organization working on behalf of a major movie studio requested removal of a movie review on a major newspaper website twice.

An individual in the U.S. requested the removal of search results that link to court proceedings referencing her first and last name on the ground that her name was copyrightable.

A driving school in the U.K. requested the removal of a competitor’s homepage from Search, on the grounds that the competitor had copied an alphabetized list of cities and regions where instruction was offered.

None of these scenarios fell under DMCA regulations, and therefore Google did not remove them. These are just examples, but Google still receives erroneous DMCA takedown requests. Our own Web site, WebProNews.com, was subject to two false takedown requests at the hands of AMC over our coverage of The Walking Dead season 3 premier. Of course, the link was non-infringing as it linked to AMC’s own stream of the premier.

The takedown request levied at our site, and others, was most likely fueled by AMC looking for links that mentioned “The Walking Dead” and “free.” There’s no thought put into the suggestion that there may be legitimate free sources to watch these episodes. Strangely enough, none of the links were removed despite some links offering illegitimate copies of The Walking Dead.

This latest offering from Google serves to make the DMCA takedown process more transparent, but it probably won’t have any effect on the amount of takedown requests sent by rightsholders. Current laws don’t enforce repercussions for those who send false takedown requests so there’s no reason for rightsholders to use caution. If laws ever do change, it’s almost guaranteed that the amount of takedown requests would drop to the few hundred thousand a month it was at in 2011.

Do you think terrorism is a problem on the Internet? What should governments do to stop it? Let us know in the comments.

The Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank in Washington D.C., issued a report on Wednesday called “Countering Online Radicalization in America.” The report issues a number of suggestions to lawmakers on how to curb the rise in terrorism online and off. The report features a number of common sense strategies that actually make a lot of sense.

The BPC outlines it strategy in three sections – Reducing the supply, reducing the demand and exploiting cyberspace. The first, reducing the supply, says that current approaches to reducing radical content on the Internet is “neither feasible or desirable.” The group also says offers some basic recommendations on how to cut down on violent rhetoric:

Government should refrain from establishing nationwide filtering systems.

Government needs to retain its capability for aggressive takedowns of foreign-based websites but only use it when doing so is absolutely essential to stop a terrorist attack and/or prevent the loss of life.

The circumstances and legal framework governing the use of cyber-attacks need to be clarified.

Prosecutions against violent extremist Internet entrepreneurs need to weigh the chances of success against the unintended consequence of drawing attention to their ideas and propaganda.

Government should accelerate the establishment of informal partnerships to assist large Internet companies in understanding national security threats as well as trends and patterns in terrorist propaganda and communication.

Most of this is really good stuff. The last recommendation is the only one that raises some concern as the government has already tried it with CISPA. The bill contained too many privacy implications, however, for it to be a worthwhile cause. The establishment of informal partnerships is a far more desirable outcome.

The second section, reducing the demand, goes with the idea that the Internet is a virtual “marketplace of ideas.” The thinking here is that governments and others can establish positive speech that will drown out any potential terroristic or radical speech that pops up online. The recommendations are as follows:

Government, in partnership with community groups, needs to continue to expand programs and initiatives that create awareness and spread information about online radicalization among educators, parents, and communities.

Government should serve as an enabler, bringing together the private sector, foundations, philanthropists, and community groups to build capacity and to help potentially credible messengers—such as mainstream groups, victims of terrorism, and other stakeholders—to become more effective at conveying their messages. The forthcoming Internet strategy should spell out what the government will do and how success will be measured.

The government’s Internet strategy also needs to make clear what part of government will coordinate capacity building, engagement, and outreach efforts as well as what resources will be made available to support this task.

The government should encourage school authorities to review and update their curricula on media literacy, consider violent extremism as part of their instruction on child-safety issues, and develop relevant training resources for teachers.

Again, some of these suggestions could easily lead into government overreach, but a lot of it is pretty good. The last recommendation is especially relevant when children are being brought up on the Internet, but many of them are not being taught basic media literacy to tell the difference between radical extremism dressed up in colorful kid friendly art and an actual kid friendly site.

The final section, exploiting cyberspace, is by far the most interesting. The report recommends that the US government not actively remove terrorists from the Internet, but rather use the Internet against them. The fact that these groups use the Internet opens up them up to exploitation on a massive scale that could potentially feed mountains of information to intelligence agencies on future plans, movement patterns and other identifying markers.

That being said, the BPC gives the following recommendations on how to best gather data without affecting civilians:

Government needs to review oversight procedures and clarify the legal framework under which domestic agencies are permitted to monitor, save, and analyze online communications.

Government should increase the amount of online training offered to members of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, including state and local agencies.

Given the rapidly changing nature of the online environment, government needs to periodically review the scope, sophistication, and appropriateness of the regulatory framework that governs data gathering and analysis in cyberspace, as well as the technological tools and capabilities that are used for doing so.

What do you think of the BPC’s recommendations? Should the US be fighting fire with fire, so to speak, when dealing with terrorists online? Let us know in the comments.

All in all, the BPC’s report is easily the best Internet-related legislative recommendation to come out of Washington this year. It’s comprehensive, easy to understand and goes against the current trend of government agencies asking for more surveillance powers when such simple solutions would work just as well.

Although the report is aimed at US lawmakers, delegates from around the world at this week’s ITU conference would be wise to take heed of these recommendations. Giving control of the Internet to a bunch of bureaucrats and letting them decide what should and should not be on the Internet isn’t going to magically rid the Internet of terrorism. Engaging these voices and exposing them as the hateful groups they are will align the public against them more strongly than a simple ban or erasure ever would.

Members of Congress will likely bring more cybersecurity legislation to the table in 2013. It will be interesting to see if any of the recommendations from this report makes into any of the proposed bills. There are easy and effective ways to counter terrorism online, and you don’t have to censor the Internet or invade citizens’ privacy to do it.

Can online terrorism be thwarted without making drastic changes to the Internet? Or must these drastic changes take place to protect others? Let us know in the comments.

In the end, you have to cut Facebook some slack. Just think about how difficult the task of moderating all of that content must be. Of course, no amount of discerning eyes could adequately cycle through the billions and billions of links, photos, and videos shared each and every day. Facebook continues to rely heavily on user reporting, and its crew of moderators at multiple global offices have a tough job – mainly determining what content violates Facebook restrictions, however convoluted they may be.

Having said that, it’s always funny when Facebook bans content that has no reason to be banned. The latest case involves this image, which features a nude women reclining in a bathtub.

Except there’s no nudity or even any suggestion of sexual activity. Here’s the image:

Did it fool you? Yes, what appears to be an exposed breast is actually just the woman’s elbow. Doesn’t matter, however, as Facebook removed the content anyway.

The image was posted by the Theories of the deep understanding of things page, who decided to troll the social network in order to test its photo removal policy.

“So, Here’s last night’s FB alertness test results: FB moderators can’t tell an elbow from a dangerous, filthy, uncanny and violent female breast>> no questions were asked and the post is down> Imagine our surprise >” they said in a post.

Apparently, they set out to provoke Facebook and succeeded.

Facebook’s current policy bans “Any obvious sexual activity, even if naked parts are hidden from view by hands, clothing or other objects. Cartoon/art included. Foreplay allowed (kissing, groping, etc.) even for same-sex individuals. Naked ‘private part,’ including females nipple bulges and naked butt cracks; male nipples are ok.” Arty nudity is OK, but breastfeeding images are still a no-go. It looks like elbows are on the no-post list as well.

Like I said before, policing all of that content must be a nightmare. Back in September, Facebook mistakenly removed a New Yorker cartoon, which contained the most harmless depiction of female breasts imaginable (two black dots for nipples). After public outcry, Facebook made this statement:

“Recently, we mistakenly blocked a cartoon as part of our efforts to keep the site safe for all and quickly worked to rectify the mistake as soon as we were notified. Facebook is a place where almost a billion people share click more than a trillion links a day. Our dedicated User Operations Team reviews millions of pieces of this content a day to help keep Facebook safe for all. Our policies are enforced by a team of reviewers in several offices across the globe. This team looks at hundreds of thousands of reports every week, and as you might expect, occasionally, we make a mistake and block a piece of content we shouldn’t have. We have already taken steps to prevent this from happening in the future and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience.”

In short, Facebook and its content moderators make mistakes. It’s inevitable. But a slight relaxing of the aforementioned content policies probably wouldn’t hurt. It would definitely result in less ridiculous removals like we see in this case. Then again, nobody wants Facebook to turn into YouPorn.

The block reportedly includes google.com, mail.google.com, google-analytics.com, docs.google.com, drive.google.com, maps.google.com, play.google.com at least. Users can reportedly still access other country versions, such as google.co.uk.

“The Communist Party of China is currently holding its 18th Party Congress in which new leaders of the party and the country are formally chosen,” the site reports. “The fact that Google is blocked now is surely no coincidence. The big question is whether it will be unblocked again once the congress is over. We will closely monitor developments.”

TheNextWeb shares a statement from Google, which simply says, “We’ve checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end.”

Google and China have had a turbulent relationship since at least early 2010, when Google threatened to pull out of the country, before ultimately redirecting Google.cn to its Hong Kong site. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google had “softened” its tone on China, but a spokesperson told WebProNews at the time, “Our position on China remains unchanged,” and that the redirect would remain in place.

Google has still maintained a presence in China, and has continued to operate other parts of its business (like Android) there.