Bowdlerize [verb] – To remove material that is considered improper or offensive from (a text or account), especially with the result that the text becomes weaker or less effective

Bowdlerize is the code name for an Android app based probe that is part of the Open Rights Group Censorship Monitoring Project, a crowd sourcing project to map the extent of censorship & filtering on the Internet

URLs are gathered from social media or user submissions & then sent to Android devices with the Censor Census app installed (and other ORG probe types too).

Upon receipt of a probe payload the app checks the URL via a HTTP HEAD request to test if it is censored or not.

The results of these tests are then aggregated by the Open Rights Group and relayed on to the Open Observatory of Network Interference project.

Anyone will be able to submit URLs to be checked via the app, this website & the Blocked.org.uk website.

People will also be able to check if a link has been flagged as blocked via various mechanisms such as OONI Reports, the app & possibly an API.