Google Taking a Stand Against Revenge Porn
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| betanews.com |
Well Google have made a positive step and pulled a Peter Finch on the unfortunate phenomenon, which is a dorky way of saying they're as mad as hell and they're not going to take this anymore. Revenge porn is already technically illegal in the UK and many other places but enforcing that illegality can be very difficult. The only way to really stamp it out is to make it easy to get the content reported as soon as it crops up.
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| Chrissy Chambers - a YouTube Star and victim of rape and subsequent revenge porn who has campaigned against it extensively (via standard.co.uk) |
What Google are doing is simple enough, anyone who asks for explicit images of them to be removed from the search results will have their wish, but this is a bigger deal than it might seem. Once something vanishes from Google's search results, it effectively vanishes from the internet. The only other widespread platforms it could then migrate to are Twitter and Facebook and that kind of thing doesn't get far on either.
"We know this won't solve the problem of revenge porn" Google search vice president Amit Singhal relayed in a blog post. "we aren't able, of course, to remove these images from the websites themselves - but we hope that honouring people's requests to remove such imagery from our search results can help."
The websites in question include 'sextortion' sites, which grotesquely force the affected individuals to pay if they want their images taken down. Larger forums like 4chan also do very little to crack down on this kind of disgraceful behaviour. Hopefully not too far in the future revenge porn will be recognised universally as an act of sexual harassment and enforced as such, but in the mean time it's good to see that Google have joined Twitter and Reddit in building a blockade against it.
Callum Davies
Callum is a film school graduate who is now making a name for himself as a journalist and content writer. His vices include flat whites and 90s hip-hop. Follow him @CallumAtSMF
Google Taking a Stand Against Revenge Porn
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Sunday, June 21, 2015
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Reviewed by Unknown
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Sunday, June 21, 2015
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Unknown
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