Google has announced that it will introduce a formal process allowing users to request the removal of "revenge porn" from Google's search engine.
Revenge porn is a term used to refer to pictures that are posted by someone with the sole purpose of publically humiliating the subject of the image. Often, it is the case of an ex-partner posting the images after a messy breakup. Sometimes hackers can also have stolen the images and posted them.
"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," said Google in a blog post. "So going forward, we'll honor requests from people to remove nude or sexually explicit images shared without their consent from Google Search results."
Unfortunately, Google's policy won't remove images from the Internet but will rather de-list the image, limiting the ability for people to search for them, with Google only being able to remove links to revenge porn. Fortunately, however, efforts to combat the practice are not just limited to Google, with states increasingly taking steps against the distribution of revenge porn. California was the first state to prosecute someone for distributing revenge porn, and the U.K. has also made laws against its distribution.
Google says that it will introduce a formal web form that will allow people to make takedown requests related to revenge porn in the next few weeks. It did not give an exact date for that form, but did say that it would update its blog when the form was online.
Google isn't the first company to deal with revenge porn and the issues associated with it. Reddit made headlines when thousands of nude photos of hundreds of celebrities were posted to its website, prompting the website to remove the photos and update its policy to prevent the same thing from happening again.
The decision for Google to allow users to request the removal of links to revenge porn follows a recent ruling in Europe related to the "right to be forgotten," which essentially allows European citizens to request the removal of links related to them. The ruling is that Google will now have to remove the links globally, rather than just on the domains related to the person's country. For example, if a German citizen requests the removal of a link, it will not only be removed from Google.de, but also from Google.com, Google.fr, and so on.
