NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> Yahoo Pushing Porn
ONLINE-ADS>> Yahoo Pushing Porn
BULMASH.COM Sales (sales_at_bulmash.com)
Wed, 22 Oct 1997 05:56:05 -0800
I've known for some time that Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com) has
adult-themed links. What I didn't know was that they were selling ad
space and keywords to hardcore porn sites.
Nevermind why I ran "butt" through Yahoo as a search term last night.
The reason was really innocent enough. But when the search results
came up with stuff like Beavis & Butthead, Butterflies, etc., the ad on
the page showed pictures of Jennifer Aniston, Demi Moore, and Helen
Hunt, with the text "who gets naked this month? Vote. Celebrity
Nude." The page it linked to (which I will not name for the sake of
propriety and due to the fact that its name is its URL) had no PICS
rating, no adult verification block, just a picture of a naked woman
(breasts and pubic hair visible) and a text warning that those under 18
should go back. Click in two links and you could see an uncensored
picture of a naked woman with a penis against against her lips, four
links and you could see an uncensored picture of hetero sexual anal
sex.
When I want back later and tried to reproduce this, I got an ad that
blew me away. It was a two-frame animation. The first frame said
"smut pic of the day." The second frame, overlayed on it, was a false
error message ("this window has performed an illegal operation and will
be shut down") with fake "close" and "ignore" buttons to trick you
into clicking on it. It led to the same site described above.
Running some other body parts through Yahoo brought up other such ads,
most of which allowed me to click through to uncensored, hardcore porn
without a block, only using text warnings and the occasional PICS
rating.
"Butt" seemed to stop working this morning, bringing up an adless page,
though "penis" brought up an ad touting lesbian videos. I don't know
if there was an exposure limit on the ad, or if Yahoo is trying to
retain some shred of responsibility and limit the ads to late night.
Even so, just because you use an anatomical word as a search term
does not mean that you are an adult or that you're seeking adult
material.
I'm just wondering about the ethics of this all. If "butt" works 24/7,
it's almost guaranteed that some kid is going to think it funny to
punch it into Yahoo, and then they could literally get tricked into
clicking over to a porn site where the page that tells them to go away
has a naked woman on it, and without something like Cybersitter
installed, no built-in protections will be engaged because the page
isn't rated.
Is this an oversight on Yahoo's part? Did the fake error ad just slip
by them? Are they being irresponsible or are they in the right? I'm
of the mind that this is unconscionable and they need to hold
themselves to a higher standard than this, and I think if this is
widely publicized, there may well be some broad public outcry.
Of course, this is just my opinion. Anyone else have thoughts on this?
-Greg
<MODERATOR's NOTE>
Like Greg, I was suprised to find out such banners were on Yahoo. I sent
this to some reporters I know at Ad Age and they informed me that they did
a story on this about a year ago. At that time Yahoo! was in trials with
adult ads and were, quote:
"...not sure that we feel comfortable with controlling the delivery
of these things enough to incorporate them into our advertising policy."
Well, I guess they got comfortable. And I can see why. A little while back
Mark Grimes of Eyescream Interactive shared with us a list of the top 200
keyword searchs on Yahoo! He obtained this list from a covert source at
Softbank, back when they were repping for Yahoo!. As Mark pointed out at
that time, 60% of the searches in the top 20 of this list are related to
sex. That is a heck of a lot of impressions available for sale. -- richard
Ad Age Article:
Search engines take a risky step: Porn banners -- December 16, 1996
http://adage.com/interactive/articles/19961216/article5.html
Eyescream Interactive's Yahoo list:
http://www.eyescream.com/yahootop200.html
</MODERATOR's NOTE>
