Qtel forces Google’s safesearch feature to be switched on – Qtel censorship
Here’s something interesting. I never really paid attention to this because I’ve never had to switch the feature off. Qtel forces google’s ‘safesearch’ feature to be switched on so that it’s always stuck on ‘On’ or ‘Strict’.
Whether you go into your preferences and switch it of or not, it’s always stuck on strict.
Guess Qtel didn’t want people using Google Images for the wrong reason and looking at tiny thumbnails of the wrong thing. *rolls eyes*
On a side note, ictQatar, the countries regulator has said that they have nothing to do with censorship. In fact if we look deeper into legislation, censorship goes again legislation and online media freedom.
Bleu said,
Wrote on December 16, 2009 @ 8:32 am
The problem is that it restricts the search results to less than half the results… even if they don’t contain anything “banned”.
Intlxpatr said,
Wrote on December 17, 2009 @ 7:01 am
Do you drive a white car with Qatar blood red hearts all over it?
Frdrckk said,
Wrote on January 2, 2010 @ 9:08 pm
This is madness.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ said,
Wrote on June 10, 2010 @ 3:09 am
It’s the same for Saudi ISPs (at least Saudinet). Interesting stuff! Trick: Just add the string: “&safe=active” to the end of each URL, and you can treat people like 10-year olds.
Kei said,
Wrote on June 10, 2010 @ 12:18 pm
doesn’t work because Qtel adds it straight onto the URL