Yahoo Shuts Chat Rooms After Child-Porn Report
“Internet portal Yahoo shut down its user-created chat rooms after a television news series showed the online service used in apparent attempts to lure children for sex. Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako would not say whether the decision was in response to a series on the NBC affiliate in Houston, television station KPRC, that showed online discussions bearing titles such as ‘9-17 Year Olds Wantin’ Sex’ and ‘Girls 12 and Under for Older Guys.’ Some of Yahoo’s advertisers, such as Pepsico Inc. and State Farm Insurance Cos., said Thursday that they pulled their advertising because of the series. ‘We were completely unaware that our ads were associated with these chat rooms in any way,’ Pepsico spokesman David DeCecco said. ‘As soon as we found out, we worked with Yahoo to remove them immediately from the site…’ Osako said the company decided to close the chat rooms, which were online discussion venues that any Yahoo user could create, because it is working on a better version. ‘We are working on improvements to enhance the user experience and compliance with our terms of service,’ she said.” —Newsday (US)
Just recently PervScan featured an article about a minor suing Yahoo because his neighbor posted nude photos of him to a Yahoo group. This story itself didn’t stir up much news fury, probably because it was hard not to suspect that the plaintiff was just looking for some easy money from a big corporation.
However, the lawsuit did seem to inspire the Houston news station KPRC to hit Yahoo where it hurts. The station ran an investigative news piece — you can view the video online — highlighting the fact that corporate advertising appeared in rather incongruous juxtapositions with chat rooms for pedophiles and “Younger Girls 4 Older Guys.” As a result, some major advertisers such as Pepsi and State Farm Insurance pulled its advertising from Yahoo. In turn, this prompted Yahoo to shut down a number of chat rooms, and thus the loss of ad dollars achieved something where the threat of lawsuit could achieve nothing.
Ironically, Houston news outlets are now running stories highlighting the frustration of innocent non-pedo people who are suffering from the loss of wrongfully closed chat rooms. And meanwhile, it’s hard to believe that, realistically speaking, closing these chat rooms will have much effect on criminal or pedophiliac behavior. There is plenty of wilderness left on the internet. People who are looking for trouble will find places to make it.
That being said, Yahoo — which, in spite of everything, has a good reputation for promoting online safety — no doubt did the right thing by killing the chat rooms. Yes, the illicit activity will simply pick up and move elsewhere. But compare pedophilia to prostitution. Though prostitution will always exist, you can’t blame Wal-Mart for not wanting hookers strolling its aisles. And the same logic holds for Yahoo: pedophilia will probably continue to flourish, but that doesn’t mean Yahoo has to tolerate it.
I agree with the comments that threatened loss of major ad sponsors / and a media spotlight had an immediate effect on Yahoo, whereas threat of individual lawsuits didn’t — but I wouldn’t give Yahoo a whole lot of credit for superior enlightened ethical, moral, nor humanitarian qualities — it IS pure business for profit! The joke is that the Yahoo User-created chat rooms have been the wild west of bizarre and extreme titles, if not practice within them since their inception - 5 plus years ago, or more? NO surprise to THEM, the average internet chat room user, the newspaper/media industry, nor certain Congressional committees and governments in general. I do take issue with the last statement above about “Yahoo having to tolerate it (pedophila)” — hell they knew it!! It was BUSINESS to them, and based on numbers of chatroom participants were selling advertising to major corporations — worse — without identifying appraently where their advertising was being shown! As also expressed in the original post here above, the same people and activities will migrate elsewhere — my guess is it did within minutes of shutting the User-created ones down — activity simply went inside the standard *Yahoo Created* chatrooms catering to the same alternate lifestyle tastes –with more use of PM / messenger rather than open chatroom for discussion. In fact, this is likely going to make it even more difficult for law enforcement and child advocate groups to monitor what is going on out there, or trends / nature of cyber activities relative to these issues. As for those that had innocent / legitimate chat rooms shut down — unfortunate but Yahoo IS a “free” service, and if their content and contacts were that valuable to them — perhaps they should have been with a pay chatroom service providing more guarantee of continuing service, or obligation to advise in advance of major changes — anyone actually read Yahoo’s TOS (terms of service)?
Yes indeed the regular chat rooms have begun to be used as hangout rooms for certain fetishes. Look at www.geocities.com/married1wannashare for one of the many listings of informal “hangout rooms.” Pay paticular interest to the “incest room” and the “young” room. Not much yahoo can do about this.
The married1wannashare link from geocities was shut down by yahoo. The new home for the hangoutroom list is www.yahlist.net
yahoo is a joke. these rooms have been around since yahoo started chat back in like 1995 with java chat. the bottom line is no girl even went into any of those room IT WAS ALL MEN.. they didn’t protect anything by taking away all user created rooms. All they need to do is hire a few people to check rooms names and content discussed in rooms. maybe once you create a room it’s name is checked before it becomes posted in the user created rooms list.
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