Google is planning to join the bandwagon of social platforms and Internet services which start setting their foot down on unauthorized nude photos by censoring them from their massive search engine.
This move is part of a new policy change that targets “revenge porn,” one of the most destructive forms of malicious practices in the online.
According to the announcements from Friday, people whose naked pictures have been posted on a website without their consent will be able to file a request with Google so those links will be prevented from appearing in the search results.
Censorship requests will be available in the next few weeks, as Google is still perfecting the form that will have to be filed out by revenge porn victims.
In the past, the tech giant has been known to deny any efforts of erasing online content from their searches, mostly because they wanted Google to show websites and image results based on relevance to one’s query.
With this libertarian judgement ruling over all searches, Google has become the world’s most dominant search engine; statistics show it processes almost two-thirds of all online requests of people looking for information.
However, the company decided it was wise to make an exception in the case of nude photos being published without consent, because a great majority of those are posted by revengeful ex-spouses or frustrated romantic partners. In some cases, it may also be about extortionists who won’t take the pictures down unless the victim pays a certain ransom.
Amit Singhal, Google’s senior vice president of search, wrote on Friday that it was time to establish a new policy for revenge porn images, because they expose the victim in a very personal way by degrading them and they do a lot of emotional damaging.
Statistically, women are more prone to being subjected to this kind of malicious behavior. Unfortunately, Google won’t be able to purge this practice from the Internet, as it has no authority over what other sites contain – even if it’s illegal or offensive content.
What Google hopes is that revenge porn will become less efficient as the content will be more difficult to find if it doesn’t appear in the search results. Similar policy changes were adopted by other heavily trafficked sites, such as Reddit, one of the most influent social forums.
Google also has previous attempts at prohibiting sexually explicit material, when earlier in 2015 it enforced a new policy on the publicly accessible sites in its Blogger service. The ban failed and was reversed days later as Blogger’s users complained about having their blogs censored with no warranties.
Image Source: Magnet Sites