Do not confuse Koogle with Google or God's gift with scrambled eggs

Five years ago, I traveled to Israel as a tourist and, strolling through the streets of Jerusalem, wandered into an Internet cafe to send photos to my parents by e-mail and was very surprised to see young ultra-religious Jews sneaking around on neighboring computers on porn sites. This was only later, having moved to Israel for permanent residence and plunged a little in the bustle, he witnessed how representatives of the ultra-religious community smashed the windows of Internet cafes, burned trash and blocked roads, expressing their protest to the development of the Internet, and with it the dangers that lie in wait for religious society.

It was a strange coincidence to visit that Internet cafe, which was then subjected to pogroms. Paradoxical as it may seem, the owner of the Internet cafe, who suffered huge losses, remained the extreme.



I don’t remember already whether this event caused the development of a whole network of “kosher” Hebrew-speaking Internet resources, but that this caused a public debate is for sure. The Shas religious party even tried to introduce a bill in the Knesset to introduce Internet censorship and received great support at the initial stage, even from secular parties. National surveys also showed high support for this initiative among the population.

In fact, in Israel, ultraorthodoxes in recent years have been struggling with the dilemma of how to limit the use of computers and the Internet, which carry a lot of temptations. The most radical groups of believers do not keep computers at home, while the liberals agree to use the Internet at work, and at home, to the maximum, by e-mail.

And, since the ultra-orthodox community is numerous and has good financial support from Europe and the USA, there were investors who began to create a computer network specifically for the “haredim”. So there were “kosher” Internet resources, news sites, such as “Kikar a-Shabat” and “Katsar”, as well as its own “kosher” Koogle search engine .

Moreover, “kosher” here means not only filtering erotic and pornographic content, but also a ban on viewing and reading news, chatting on forums, advertising, as well as blocking the use of resources on Saturday, during posts and Jewish holidays, such as Doomsday ...

In other words, by logging on to the Internet, the user will only be able to access sites approved by the rabbinate (the main religious judicial authority in Israel), which is trying to extend its power not only to censorship content, but also to approval (“caching”, which is ironic consonant with the “caching”) of computers through which it will be possible to use the Internet, as well as mobile phones, because all these innovations, according to the rabbinate: “can pose a threat to conservative ultra-orthodox values ​​and a special way for life, especially among young people. ”



I was interested and I went to the “kosher” Koogle search engine and tried to find something “not kosher”, which resulted in a search result that translates something like this: "Most likely, the type of business you are looking for is in the search engine, but you made a mistake, correct the error and try again . "Well, firstly, I was not mistaken, at least spelling. Secondly, I was confused why it says" type business. ”After an additional short acquaintance, it became clear that the“ kosher ”search engine is just a catalog of“ kosher ”resources and a search among them.

Although stated by search engine administrator Yossi Altman: “Koogle filters out inappropriate content by omitting religiously questionable web sites when displaying results. These include not only eroticism and pornography, but also most of the usual photographs of women, since they are most often considered immodest ”- in fact, there is no tricky filter for dropouts, and a regular search in the catalog is among those that have already received approval.

Putting things in order on the Internet is not a new initiative and it is clear that with the advent of Web 3 the era of personified Internet will begin and this initiative will be embodied. However, such initiatives in Israel always alarm me, because there is a deep social conflict between secular and religious, expressed in a bias in protecting the rights of secular communities. Therefore, religious attempts to introduce censorship on the Internet will be regarded by a part of society as attempts to conquer another financial niche "for issuing permits."

And after all, the most important thing is that it is possible to introduce censorship in Israel. How is it possible to prohibit IP telephony on the grounds that local telecom operators are suffering losses (there was a temporary ban 5 years ago, then canceled). How is it possible to ban the import of iPad-s or seriously discuss the issue in the government, so whether to ban Skype or not?

In the meantime, it is encouraging that innovation is so rapidly conquering the market that no accelerated decision at the legislative level will stop this avalanche. It remains only at times to experience a kind of "bans" on what is progressively, conveniently, meets the requirements of users and at the same time does not infringe on their rights and freedom of choice.

And one can only hope that in Israel this business will not go as far as it happened in China or Iran.

PS
He laughed when he came up with the title of the article. First I remembered the saying about God's gift and scrambled eggs, and then I remembered that Google had two circles of yellow like fried eggs, the search for such a logo through Google was not successful, so I had to draw it myself. Therefore, whoever finds that respect from me.