Google is taking steps to address a persistent problem of the digital age: What to do when people upload nude or sexually explicit pictures of others without their permission. On Friday, the company announced it will let victims of so-called revenge porn ask for the removal of certain webpages from Google’s search results.
“We’ve heard many troubling stories of “revenge porn”: an ex-partner seeking to publicly humiliate a person by posting private images of them, or hackers stealing and distributing images from victims’ accounts,” said Google in a blog post. “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.”
As the company acknowledges in the blog post, the new policy will not entirely solve the problem of “revenge porn” since Google(GOOG) cannot delete the underlying website from the internet. But it may bring victims some comfort by making the websites harder to find.
For victims, who are typically women, “revenge porn” can be doubly traumatizing because there are few practical resources to remove the photos. In many cases, the photos appear on websites that permit anyone to upload a name and picture; the operators of those websites, meanwhile, are shielded by a law that provides legal immunity for user-submitted content. Even worse, such websites often work hand-in-glove with “reputation defender” companies that require victims to pay hundreds of dollars to get a photo removed – a form of extortion in other words.
The new Google policy also comes as more states move to address the problem with new criminal laws (it’s unclear if all of these laws will survive constitutional scrutiny).
Google’s new policy, meanwhile, is unlikely to stir controversy. Unlike requests based on copyright or the “right to be forgotten,” which people have used as a pretext to delete information in the public interest, it appears improbable that someone would try to misuse Google’s revenge porn policy in similar fashion.
Asking Google to remove a search result for an unauthorized nude pictures will require people to complete a form along with the URL from the offending website. It’s unclear if the form, which Google says will become available in coming weeks, can be used only by those who appear in the pictures, or if family or guardians will be able to make such requests as well.
Google’s move on Friday was hailed on social media by revenge porn opponents.