Queen Elizabeth | Paisley | NOT What You Think
In the few words shared by the Google Image Safe Search team about decision-making around images, there’s an inference that the answers are obvious to smart, conscientious people.
By asking ourselves if an image could be considered inappropriate by a mom — any mom anywhere in the world — the answer is almost always that we will defer on the side of caution.
Imagine my surprise to read that the performance artist Paisley was featured sans clothes at the Chelsea Flower Show in England. By any Google Image criteria, the photo that follows the one of Queen Elizabeth is not suitable for moderate search. (You see a ni-ple, and my understanding is that this is foreboden in Google moderate search.)
Yet the British press not only showed the photos, but the comments were oblivious to the event. Everyday Brits were fine that Paisley added a human sensual dimension to a flower show promoting the beauty of nature.
Bottom line, America is one of the most conservative countries in the world, when it comes to journalism arenas. My sense is that even Google Images may give a pass on Paisley — not photographed here. (I’m trying to get reinstated in moderate search).
Google Images insists that it doesn’t filter art out of moderate search, and a specific artwork discussed between us confirmed that position. We left the photo in Anne of Carversville, based on the Google Images response.
What happens when the artist is a living human walking n-ked, except for a thong, around the Chelsea Flower show? Is this real performance artist stil art?
I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that sensual fusion surrounds us and to leave Internet standards for moderate search in Google Images to any mom, anywhere in the world, seems very not fair to the rest of us who seek visual information.
What is needed is a fourth category of Google Image search, if mom from Wyoming rules how good journalists report their facts. I repeat — we are not p-rno-graphers. Anne
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