Google to begin removing revenge porn images from search results
In today's high tech world where everything is accessed via the internet, there have been too many victims who have had their privacy violated by revenge porn, or the upload of private and intimate images and videos (normally featuring women) absent of consent. Google, acting as one of the top tech hubs of the world, and recognizing their stature of a search engine that accounts for nearly 70% of global searches, announced yesterday that they will remove all photos of individuals from their search queries when asked by those victimized by the disgusting acts.
Amit Singhal, SVP of Google Search states that “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.”
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As Singhal said, this will not completely eradicate the problem of revenge porn, but it's warming to know that an entity like Google, who has the power and force to instill change are doing what they can to push society into the right direction. As mentioned by Jennifer Golbeck from Slate, Google's move is influential because it “throws down a gauntlet for other search engines, which must follow suit or make an argument that revenge porn deserves to be accessible.” Hopefully as this new plan unfolds for Google, more internet powers can join the fight.
