National Center on Sexual Exploitation Encourages Policies for Human Dignity
Washington, DC – Last Friday, Senior Vice President of Google Search, Amit Singhal, wrote on the Google Public Policy Blog that the technology company would create a complaint form for victims of revenge porn so that their images could no longer be found through Google’s search engine. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCSE) praises this improvement as a step in the right direction regarding pornography on the internet, and presses Google to continue this redirection by better monitoring Youtube.
“It is significant that Google is taking the initiative against revenge porn, because it shows the company is willing to restructure its policies in order to promote human dignity,” said Dawn Hawkins, Vice President of NCSE. This is not the first time Google has altered its rules concerning pornography. In 2014, Google changed its policies to prohibit pornographic ads, or ads linking to pornography.
While Google is making significant strides in its policies on porn, YouTube, the popular video-sharing site owned by Google, has yet to improve its functions. Google has been on NCSE’s Dirty Dozen list for three years, first for their pornographic ads, and now for YouTube’s failure to monitor its content, despite its strict terms of use. Hardcore pornography is against YouTube’s rules, and yet it continues to generate views and profits from it, instead of following Google’s lead and getting out of the porn business.
For Google to truly take a stand against the exploitation of its customers, it must not stop here. YouTube must better enforce its existing policies, or risk becoming a hypocritical branch to the Google brand.
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