By Hannah Ringheim
Big sites are starting to limit sexually explicit material found online when it was found that a quick Google search for words, such as “sex” bring up over 67 million pages from the Web. Certaitnly it does feel like a natural fit for Web-based businesses looking to attract viewers and consumers, however these large sites are now deciding against it. A recent blog posted on YouTube (owned by Google) that outlined a series of new measures to help regulate “mature materials,” and this blog also stated that YouTube will be changing its’ past policies.
It will begin restricting videos categorized as containing profanity or sexually suggested materials to viewers who say that they are at least 18. And it will change its search to demote explicit videos from top-ranked lists. However, how effective can this be? Surely by just asking the viewer if they are over 18 doesn’t prove if he or she actually is or not. In response to this recent blog stating the new policies, it received over 1,300 comments in response expressing outrage and disappointment. To what extent can these new policies be enforced? Will consumers actually abide by them?
1 Comment
December 9, 2008 at 1:26 am
I believe that there is no easy solution in site. Now that is more than common for younger people to grow up using computers everyday of their life from their early days of youth, they know how to manipulate the system. Clearly the old system where the websites would simply ask the user if they were 18 to press agree and if they were not to press exit website was not a good one. I am not too good with the technicalities of websites and such, but I am sure there is definitely something to prevent younger people to gain access to this inappropriate content. But the fact of the matter is, if you block it on the Internet, than they will just find another way to have the ability to watch inappropriate material, such as in movie theaters how no one actually check whether or not you are 17 years old to go into a rated R movie.