Google Will Remove Revenge Porn From Search Results

Google will begin removing revenge porn from its search results at the request of victims, the search giant announced in a blog post Friday.

People posting private, explicit photos of their ex-partners (typically women) on the Internet for all to see has become a growing problem. In the coming weeks, Google will introduce a form that victims of revenge porn can use to request that links to those images don’t show up in user searches.

“Our philosophy has always been that Search should reflect the whole web,” senior vice president for search Amit Singhal wrote in the blog post. “But revenge porn images are intensely personal and emotionally damaging, and serve only to degrade the victims—predominantly women.”

Google stressed that the policy will be “narrow and limited.” The company removes sensitive information from its search results in a few other instances, such as when a result links to a person’s bank account number or signature. And in Europe, Google now has to remove more subjective negative information about citizens thanks to a court ruling that enshrined a “right to be forgotten” online.