Google will now honor requests to remove revenge porn, explicit images put online for the purpose of cyber-bullying.
The policy update was announced by Senior Vice President Amit
Singhal in his blog for the world’s most popular online search
engine.
“Our philosophy has always been that search should reflect
the whole web,” Singhal wrote. “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.”
“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,” he said.
READ MORE: Revenge isn’t tweet: Twitter cracks down on ‘revenge porn’ abusers
The problem of revenge porn has grown as digital cameras and
services that store content online were becoming more readily
accessible. Some websites now specialize in storing such photos
and videos, usually provided by disgruntled ex-partners of the
victim.
Some of those even resort to “sextortion,” where the
victim is forced to pay money to have the embarrassing material
removed. In March, Kevin Bollaert, a 28-year-old man from San
Diego, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for operating a
sextortion website.
Activists and lawyers are seeking to outlaw this form of
cyber-bullying, which can be very stressful for their victims. In
2013, a 17-year-old Brazilian woman, Julia Rebecca, committed
suicide after a sex tape of her was released online. The incident
sparked outrage in the country.
In the US there was the infamous case of 15-year-old Audrie Pott,
whose ultimately fatal ordeal involved release of her explicit
image online.
Google says it will roll out an online form for revenge porn
blockage requests in a few weeks. The tech giant says it will
treat them as it does request concerning sensitive information
like bank account numbers or social security numbers that can
surface in search results.
The company said it would be a “narrow and limited policy,” so
apparently people victimized with embarrassing but not explicit
images of them should not apply for such protection.