This morning brings a nice column from Seth Finkelstein in The Guardian about sex, search, and “content filtering.” What I appreciate about Seth’s point of view is that he’s got deep expertise in the nuts and bolts of how these things work, he’s not given to conspiracy theories, but doesn’t give an inch to the powers that be.  He’s also a lucid and entertaining writer, with a sense of humor as dry as a leaf in Winter:

Real sex is difficult for the Googlebot. If humans argue so much about distinguishing between erotica and pornography, imagine the difficulty search algorithms have with the topic. Two years ago, an admitted bug in a change to Google’s ranking algorithm caused many respected and popular sexuality-related sites to suddenly lose their rank in search results. The bug was soon fixed, but not before it had made Google’s treatment of sexual material into a prominent issue.

Although such events often spawn theories about political motivations, the explanation is almost always along the lines of a problem with Google’s spam-filtering; instances of governmental censorship of search engines in western countries are very rare. As porn is one of the most popular subjects for spam, legitimate writers concerned with sexual topics can find themselves filtered out as collateral damage.

I don’t expect Google’s much-celebrated algorithm would have any better luck with the Erotic vs Porngraphy question then we mere humans, but one would hope it would at least be able to distiguish between the internet’s honest participants and bad actors. Sadly, a Google-search like ["bill and desiree"] doesn’t give me much hope; Google ranks stolen torrents of our just released Bill and Desiree: Love is Timeless pages ahead of our own efforts to promote and sell the film on the web.

Of course I would suppose there are those who would argue that whether Google’s efforts represent a war on spam, a war on pornography, or a war on sex, it’s a war worth winning, and the harm to Comstock Films, if not intended, still falls in the realm of “acceptable losses”; that the suppression of Comstock Films that’s taken place over the last two years in Google’s search returns is an unintended, but inevitable side effect of Google’s larger efforts “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” As Seth puts it – collateral damage.

We’ve made every effort we can to make Google (and the rest of the world) aware of the effect of the New Searchable Era ™ and the Complaint Driven Internet ™ on our ablity to continue to make the films we make, but for us, things are getting worse, not better.  I sometimes imagine (sardonically) a Google senior engineer watching our site sink in their rankings, shaking his head and muttering “poor bastards”; like we were a company sent on a suicide mission for the greater good of the battle. (No one’s ever accused me of not having an over-inflated sense of self-importance.)

Of course what you think is important is a product of your values and your point of view. More than once I’ve been accused of merely arguing for my own self-interest. As a Madisonian, that accusation has always left me puzzled. Who’s interest am I supposed to be arguing? And never minding that, doesn’t the minority point of view have a vital role to play in a pluralistic democracy? But perhaps I flatter myself too much. Returning to Seth, who’s more temperate:

It’s become almost a cliche to point out that algorithmic choices made by search engines represent social values. But different factions care about different values, as demonstrated in the case of complex topics such as sex. As more groups begin to see how Google’s determinations affect their own interests, we’ll likely see repeated outrage from people newly arrived to these debates.

Here in the US these “filtering” debates seem confined to sex, and for the most part people can go about their daily lives untroubled, unaware even, of what they do or do not see. No one’s life depends on whether they find their way to ComstockFilms.com and and are exposed to our point of view on the collision of sex and the moving image, so for now I suppose to most people the debate seems frivilous, and perhaps, given the focus on sex, a little unseemly. I don’t expect to see the level of energy and outrage these same questions have provoked in the UK, or Australia, or China unless or until everyday people feel like they’re losing something important to them.

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I sent a note to Seth, thanking him for the article and for mentioning us:

Just read the guardian column. Of course I appreciate the coverage, but the perspective you bring is just as valuable. Today’s Peggy’s birthday and we’ve spent several hours talking about what’s next. More than likely the next project won’t involve sex. I guess we’ve arrived at the same conclusion as Google: it’s just too much trouble. 

Seth’s reply, droll and understated as usual:

The Google God wields great power over commerce.

And of course commerce wields great power over culture. For every Don Quixote, eager to tilt at windmills, there are thousands of everyday people who just want to peacefully go about their business.