Revenge porn has been a major issue since the inception of major pornographic sites. The shame caused by the widely-shared images have unfortunately led some people to give a tragic end to their lives.
After constant pressure from the Internet community and respective organizations, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has announced that it will be removing pornographic content that has been published without the consent of the person displayed in the picture or video. According to the company’s release, the particular program has been in the works for the last two years and it will be rolled out to the public in the coming weeks.
The program includes an application form where the user can post the link that wishes to be removed and some other personal info just in case. Google has not unveiled any specific information regarding the verification procedure; if there is going to be an algorithm or an actual human team behind this. What we know for sure is that popular revenge porn websites won’t be removed from Google’s search results but individual content only. The search giant has worked closely with Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, an anti-revenge-porn advocacy group, on the policy of the initiative.
At the current moment at hand, the revenge porn policy is inefficient. Few states have implemented it and still works under some questionable terms. For instance, in California the particular law solely applies when the individual sharing the photo is also the photographer.
Google’s decision comes after other significant social media companies’ – such as Facebook, Twitter and Reddit – update of their policy regarding the certain matter.
Senior Vice president of Google search, Amit Singha, mentioned in a relevant blog post:
“Revenge porn images are intensely personal and emotionally damaging, and serve only to degrade the victims — predominantly women,… So going forward, we’ll honor requests from people to remove nude or sexually explicit images shared without their consent from Google Search results.
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