Seems locked. My laptop, nobody else uses it. I’ve not altered any settings. And yet the Safe Search is on.
The “how to alter Safe Search” links are a feedback loop. There are no options when you click the link to find options.
Quite vexing.
Thoughts?
Go here: Search Settings
There should be a SafeSearch filter section, in which you can disable the setting.
Go to Bing, and turn off safe search there. I never had the same problem with google with my netbook, but I did with Yahoo images.
As for actual “Thoughts,” see if this link takes you to anything useful.
Well, sonofabitch. I just tested that link and now it looks like I don’t have a “no filtering” option any more. Way to go, Google!*
Seriously, switch to Bing.
*I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that I just followed NOD32’s advice and updated my OS today.
exactly. there are no more options to change the filter.
I’m a big fan of Google but I have to admit this is stupid.
I have not updated anything that I’m aware of.
Once I do a search, the option pops up as a pull-down button on the upper-right corner, just below the “sign in” link. Again, you need to do a search first, before it pops up.
and that means safe search?
In the last couple of years, the UI designers in the Google Conglomerate, including YouTube, Google itself, Gmail (which I don’t use), and Blogger, have made the dumbest design decisions I have ever seen in a modern web environment. In their clumsy attempts to monetise they have managed to cripple everything they used to hold up as their genius ideas. It’s like they’re trying to drive people away.
The safe search button will be set to whatever you had set in the past. If you click the words safe search that appear the checkmark turns on or off to change the setting.
Clicking on the gear symbol produces a drop-down menu that includes “search settings” Click on that and that’s the same page as preferences.
The problem is that Safe Search Off now defaults to what used to be Moderate Safe Search. You can see this if you scroll to the bottom of a search page and click Switch to basic version. The basic version page will say Moderate SafeSearch is On.
Use Google’s Advanced Image Search. (Why would anyone use a search other than advanced anyway?) SafeSearch is an option you can explicitly set on a per-search basis.
I think it defaults to whatever you set in Settings.
Because they know how to use Google, and don’t need to be handheld in enabling other options? You can do it all in the search box. You know, the one that’s actually in your browser that doesn’t require loading a superfluous page, or two in you case.
Also, there are still only two options on SafeSearch, even in advanced mode.
Google is getting so incredibly stupid. I’ve progressed to spamming YouTube every day for removing recommended videos and replacing them with the useless “recommended channels” that recommends channels you’ve already viewed, and thus decided you didn’t want to subscribe. I mean, they can barely predict what videos I’d like, and the only saving grace is how many there are. They can’t handle coming up with channels I’d like to subscribe to.
As noted, the option on that page is still binary; you can only select “Show most relevant results” or “Filter explicit results” - and this does appear to be a recent change, as Google’s own Help screen still refers to the three-tiered model (Strict/Moderate/None).
No. It does not. Going into settings doesn’t help, you cannot do anything but click on " Filter Explicit Results " or “Report Offensive Images” or " More About SafeSearch" , which is a feedback loop. I cannot alter the SafeSearch settings or turn them off to allow anything other than the most restricted search results.
Going into Settings for Firefox yields nothing. Logging on and going into Settings for Google do not allow alterations from SafeSearch.
ETA: Tried Advanced Image Search. It does not alter the fact that when you fill in whatever parameters you wish, SafeSearch is still applied.
It looks to me like they made it harder to find pornographic images but they’re still there. I searched for “fuck” and got pictures that contained the word and people giving the finger to the camera. I searched for “Jenna Jameson” and got pictures of her clothed. I put the two queries together and I got a pop-over telling me that I could enable filtering of explicit results if I wanted to. Dismissing that got me the images you’d expect.
That’s odd cause I am in the Chicago Public Library right now and Google doesn’t filter anything. It defaulted to “off,” I have to turn it on.
Interesting. But the filter is still controlled server-side; that is, Google somehow decides whether or not to offer the unexpurgated results based on the query. I wonder what their criteria are; obviously there should be some explicit results for images of “fuck”, but they don’t even offer them via the pop-over.
I wonder if this is one of those changes that propagates slowly through the system, or if Google is maybe testing changes to their preferences set-up.
My filtering was always off as well. The point I was making is that searches that in the past would have resulted in explicit results now did not. When I did a search that was basically telling Google I really, really wanted to see explicit images it returned those results. The first time I did such a search it gave me the pop-over warning even though I was not filtering results. Any subsequent explicit search did not give me the pop-over.
Just what do they think the Internet is for? 
Monetization, of course. 
You have to be logged-in for the setting to “stick”, BTW. If you’re not logged-in to Google, it’ll always default to SafeSearch: On