Revenge porn is among the , and that鈥檚 saying a lot. The images 鈥� typically private, sexually explicit photos published by an ex 鈥� aren鈥檛 just briefly humiliating; they sometimes dominate the search results for a person鈥檚 name.
People have engaged in fruitless legal manoeuvres to get the images removed and have even tried to change their identities to escape the photos or videos.
Sites like and have tried to ban revenge porn on their platforms. Governments are trying to find ways to and those posting the images.
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These are all good steps, but, as with all things online, the content can be shifted around, with new platforms popping up, often outside the US, making prosecution difficult. If the images can be found, the harassers achieve their purpose.
Image takedown
On Friday, Google took a big step toward stopping that. that in the coming weeks, it will remove these images from search results when the person in the photo requests it.
In a statement Google said: 鈥淥ur 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 鈥� predominantly women. So going forward, we鈥檒l honour requests from people to remove nude or sexually explicit images shared without their consent from Google Search results.鈥�
Google plays a critical role in providing the world with access to information. If a page doesn鈥檛 appear in Google鈥檚 search results, it becomes very hard to find. Yes, there are other search engines, but Google is the most popular, . Its move to remove revenge porn images isn鈥檛 just effective because of its market share; it also throws down a gauntlet for other search engines, which must follow suit or make an argument that revenge porn deserves to be accessible.
Importantly, Google is recognising the line between free speech and a right to protect one鈥檚 deeply personal information. This isn鈥檛 the same thing as Europe鈥檚 鈥�right to be forgotten鈥�. Google already removes pages with other sensitive personal data, like social security numbers and credit card numbers.
Slippery slope?
Removing nude photos is very much in the spirit of the existing policy. At the same time, it is affirming that people deserve control over these intensely private images of themselves.
The biggest tech companies, like Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook, have a lot of control over what we can access online and how we see it. This is a new type of influence, and as a society we are still grappling with the implications. What if Facebook uses its to swing an election? Or, in this case, what if a search engine refuses to give us the information we are searching for? It鈥檚 easy to think up dire implications that could follow this precedent, but that doesn鈥檛 mean that we are starting down a slippery slope.
Google has made a moral decision against revenge porn and put its substantial weight behind that. It shows how tech companies can help stamp out a scourge, and this move should be part of the ongoing conversation about an open internet and the right to control our personal information.
Google effectively summed up the policy and its impact in its public statement: 鈥淲e know this won鈥檛 solve the problem of revenge porn 鈥� we aren鈥檛 able, of course, to remove these images from the websites themselves 鈥� but we hope that honoring people鈥檚 requests to remove such imagery from our search results can help.鈥� Let鈥檚 hope it does.
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