Paris (AFP)

The French search engine Qwant presented Tuesday in Paris a new version of its declination dedicated to children Qwant Junior, which must dismiss the offensive and inappropriate content for the young audience while highlighting educational content.

The interface of the site allows children "from 6 to 12 years" to search for educational content, information on news sites, fun activities or web pages in general, all without advertising on the results pages .

"Responsible internet actors must respect the privacy of children and parents, and we must collectively refuse to monetize the attention of the child that is through targeted advertising," said the co-founder president Qwant Eric Léandri, quoted in a statement.

"Today, Qwant Junior is a cost center for Qwant but we are in the context of a product appeal," told AFP the general manager Tristant Nitot, during the presentation.

Qwant Junior highlights a selection of content "with recognized pedagogical quality, especially on the Education tab", details the release. He also takes advantage of Vikidia, a participatory encyclopedia for children, was able to see AFP.

"With this new version, we go even further in ergonomics.When a child seeks the word terrorism for example, we will offer him a definition adapted to children, but no images or videos. little dinosaur + will advise him to deepen the subject with an adult ", presented Tristan Nitot.

Another innovation, the interface allows to search and play videos from digital platforms in a sleek reader, without comments or recommendations section leading to other videos.

To filter out violent, shocking or pornographic results, Qwant Junior uses "automated detection systems" as well as blacklists to which teachers can contribute by signaling content to be removed.

"The best control is the human," said AFP Marie Juyaux, deputy general manager of Qwant, which nevertheless points the weak "flow" of content reported so far. One person is sufficient today to check these links before possibly removing them, according to her.

Inaugurated at the end of 2015, Qwant Junior received 4.6 million visits in September, according to Tristan Nitot.

Launched in 2013, Qwant is among the few global companies with their own web indexing engines, different from those used by the ultra-dominant Google, the Microsoft Bing challenger or the Russian and Chinese engines.

Qwant says he receives "more than 80 million hits a month" today.

The government announced in May want to propose by default this search engine on all computers of the French administration.

© 2019 AFP