After a television news report about chat rooms being used by adults to influence minors to have sex with them, Yahoo has put a stop to allowing users to set up their own chat rooms.
”We began implementing the changes to Yahoo Chat user rooms in the past week,” said Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako. ”We are working on improvements to enhance the user experience in compliance with our terms of service.”
For now, users will only be able to chat in rooms that Yahoo itself has set up and maintains. Yahoo said that the personal chat rooms will be available at some point, once they can control them better.
Some of the chat rooms that were shut down were called things like “Girls 13 and Under for Older Guys” and “Younger Girls for Older Guys” said the TV report. Hiawatha Bray with the Boston Globe writes:
This isn’t the first time an Internet service has restricted chat room usage because of concerns about child exploitation. In 2003, Microsoft eliminated its MSN chat room services outside the United States and required American users to be paying customers of the company — both efforts to weed out pedophiles.
The America Online Internet service gives its members considerable leeway, including the ability to set up private rooms for adults-only conversations. But spokesman Nicholas Graham said AOL has strict rules to protect children.
The TV report about Yahoo also led to advertisers pulling their ads that were appearing in the rooms. These advertisers included Pepsi, State Farm Insurance, and Georgia-Pacific.
”We were thoroughly appalled when we were told that our ads were appearing on those sites,” said Phil Supple, a spokesman for State Farm. ”We took immediate action to see that they were withdrawn.”
Chris is a staff writer for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest ebusiness news.
