Yikes - Teh Yahoo caught pimpin teh girlie pics!
Nope, no joke. Yahoo! is 100% caught RED HANDED suggesting that visitors gaze at pictures of underage girls in advertising on their own website. Underage pictures are no joke, they destroys lives and causes pain, life long suffering and misery… so WTH is up with this July 4th, 2008 Yahoo! article??
On Friday July 4th, 2008 Yahoo! News ran an article about Ashley Dupre and how she had dropped her lawsuit against Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis. Ashley’s picture originaly spread over the internet like wildfire after it was discovered that a married New York Gov, Elliot Spitzer, had slept with her. The latest Yahoo! article is just an update to say the suit was dropped…
Screen capture of the Independence day, 2008 Yahoo! article
Screen capture of same article promoting underage girl pictures
As you can plainly see in the second screenshot the words ‘underage girls’ are underlined and hovering the mouse over this section results in a popup window encouraging visitors to click through to view pictures of underage girls.
In Yahoo!’s Defence
Yahoo offers methods in which links can be placed directly onto their websites without being screened. It’s likely that Yahoo! has no idea that they are promoting underage pictures.
There is no defence
The reason I’m bothering to write this article is that there absolutely IS NO DEFENCE because there is zero tolerance on the subject. Underage pictures of boys and girls violate the rights of the subject and are against federal law to view. If a school teacher made the suggestion they would be fired and possibly charged, so why is Yahoo! able to get off easily?
Disclaimer - I have not and will not click through to see the pictures Yahoo! is suggesting I take a look at. I would be breaking the law if I did so knowingly.
It’s very possible that certain keywords in this article will trigger attention and you know what? I HOPE THEY DO. Something is broken when one of the internets premiere websites is peddling kiddie pics and now Yahoo! needs to help fix it.
Unrelated but from the same article…
Goodnight Yahoo!, I hope you wake up before I do.
Update: July 5th, 2008. The link to pictures of underage girls on Yahoo! news is still active but I want to clarify that It may or may not be a paid link. Yahoo! shortcuts attempts to link related topics together but doesn’t reveal the specific inner workings of how they do. I was hoping the link would be down this morning, I can only believe the term should be added to the black list shortly. I’m a fan of the Yahoo! company in general but when something so blatant comes up… someone has to speak up if nobody else has.
Update: July 6th, 2008. The link has been removed in a speedy response by yahoo!
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[…] でも、あるブログが、この機能にはヤバイ面もあるぞ、と指摘している。たとえば、ニューヨーク州知事Eliot Spitzerを破滅させたコールガール、Ashley Dupreのことを書いたこの記事には、“未成年の少女”という言葉にリンクが張られている。クリックすると、未成年の女の子たちの写真を集めたFlickrのページへ行っちゃうのだ。 […]
While this is definitely a serious issue, I think you’re exaggerating things a bit. I thought Yahoo! was linking to nude pictures. It is NOT illegal to view pictures of underage kids, so long as those pictures are not pornographic in nature (if it was, we’d all be committing a crime every time a diaper commercial came on TV), so you’re not going to go to jail for clicking that link.
Having said that, it’s still a serious issue, and I’m glad to see that Yahoo! has dealt with it.
I guess even the big boys make mistakes sometimes =)
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