Victims of revenge porn often suffer great distress after a former partner posts explicit content of them without permission online.Google has taken a big step toward protecting victims of revenge porn. In the coming weeks, the search giant will begin...
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Google has made a recent pledge to ban revenge porn pictures from its search results. While their efforts won’t obliterate the problem, their pledge promises to alleviate what otherwise could be a very damaging experience for revenge porn victims. “Our philosophy has always been that Search should reflect the whole web,” relates Amit Singhal, the senior vice president of Google Search. “But revenge porn images are intensely personal and emotionally damaging, and serve only to degrade the victims—predominantly women.”
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Going forward, Google Search promises to honor requests from individuals to have sexually explicit images that were posted without their consent removed from Google’s search results. Singhal explains in a public statement posted June 19 that “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.”
How individuals will be able to report images is currently unclear. However, in the upcoming weeks, Google Search will be implementing a way for users to send in requests to have revenge porn images removed from search results. Singhal asks concerned parties to stay tuned as updates become available at their public policy blog.
This announcement serves as a relief for many who have had to face this kind of degradation. One victim writes in response to Singhal’s post that the news is life-changing. “This change is going to help countless victims and will save lives, thank you,” she writes. Another commenter writes, “Thank you for taking a step in the right direction, Google, by doing what you can to end revenge porn.”
Revenge porn is not only humiliating but also damages many victims’ lives. It’s a hate crime, pure and simple. Images that surface in search results become accessible to employers, clients, colleagues and even friends, rendering victims unemployable and socially shamed.
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