Your revenge porn problems may be over sooner than you thought possible!
State legislators have been feverishly passing regional anti-revenge porn laws; several social media platforms have also taken public stands against the practice, and now the mother of all search engines, Google, has declared itself amenable to revenge porn de-indexing.
The Google Revenge Porn Link Removal Service
Google announced it will gladly consider de-indexing legitimate incidents of revenge porn if contacted by the damaged party. According to the company’s announcement: “Our philosophy has always been that Search should reflect the whole web. But 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. This is a narrow and limited policy, similar to how we treat removal requests for other highly sensitive personal information, such as bank account numbers and signatures, that may surface in our search results.” “In the coming weeks we’ll put up a web form people can use to submit these requests to us, and we’ll update this blog post with the link. “We know this won’t solve the problem of revenge porn—we aren’t able, of course, to remove these images from the websites themselves—but we hope that honoring people’s requests to remove such imagery from our search results can help. “Our philosophy has always been that Search should reflect the whole web. But revenge porn images are intensely personal and emotionally damaging, and serve only to degrade the victims. “will require people to complete a form along with the URL from the offending website. It’s unclear if the form, which Google says will become available in coming weeks, can be used only by those who appear in the pictures, or if family or guardians will be able to make such requests as well.”
Some pundits believe Google’s intentions are admirable, but ultimately predict a Pyrrhic victory. Tech Dirt explained the potential negative consequences: I hope I’m wrong. But for too long we’ve seen too many people looking to find ways to censor all sorts of content they dislike, and to find cracks in the dam to try to push censorship agendas. And thus, while I’m fully supportive of coming up with plans to actually end revenge porn, I’m nervous that wading into this territory will only open up a path to greater censorship and dangerous unintended consequences.
Google’s newest policy measure to help stamp out revenge porn is admirable on an ethical level. The company’s intentions are genuine and commendable. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see if Google’s compassion play will be used to further any questionable censorship goals.
Speak With An Internet Lawyer About Getting Information De-Indexed From Google & Other Search Engines
Is there something you’d like removed from either a revenge porn website or Google’s search engine? Kelly Warner’s online removal lawyers can review your situation. Based on the details, we’ll recommend the best course of action for you. Get in touch today to begin the conversation.
Source Articles:
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with us.