Yahoo! Closes Down User Chat Rooms

[Evi]

Family advocacy groups lauded Yahoo Inc. on Thursday for closing its chat rooms to clean up areas that allegedly were used to prey on children.

Over the past month, pressure has been building on Yahoo to crack down on chat rooms that promoted sex with minors. After learning some of their advertisements were showing up in such chat rooms, companies such as PepsiCo Inc., Georgia-Pacific Corp. and State Farm Insurance removed their ads.

Yahoo\'s move came after a lawsuit was filed against the Internet portal last month on behalf of a 12-year-old molestation victim and following a long campaign by watchdog groups to persuade Yahoo and other large Internet portals to purge their sites of child porn. The suit seeks $10 million in damages.

"The specific reason for the closure not withstanding, this is a positive a step in the online fight against child exploitation," said Michelle Collins, director of the exploited children unit at The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, based in Alexandria, Va.

Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said the company closed down user-created sites to make enhancements and to ensure users were adhering to the site\'s terms of service.

But after years of trying to persuade Sunnyvale-based Yahoo to go after child pornographers operating within the chat rooms, critics suspect the threat of a costly civil suit and the potential loss of advertising dollars likely prompted Yahoo to act.

Patrick Truman, a senior legal counsel for the conservative Christian group, Family Research Council and a former federal prosecutor, believes Yahoo has the means to police its site more effectively than it does. The company acknowledges that it does not monitor its chat rooms.

"I\'m glad a suit has finally been brought because it will give someone access to the way Yahoo operates," Truman said. "Records can now be subpoenaed that will show the kind of knowledge Yahoo has about the trade of child pornography in its chat rooms."

In 2002, an FBI investigation revealed that child pornography was being distributed in a Yahoo chat room called Candyman. The chat room operated two months before being shut down.

Among the photographs circulated on Candyman was one of a 12-year-old boy from Georgia who was molested and photographed committing sex acts against his will, according to the boy\'s attorney, Adam Voyles.

The lawsuit claims Yahoo, which has until July to respond to the suit, is liable for what transpired within Candyman.

"These problems are not new," Voyles said. "It\'s been going on since the 1990s. Yahoo has not changed its behavior. I hope it does. I hope they take this opportunity to clean up."

Meanwhile, Yahoo must move to shore up its relationship with some of its sponsors.

Pepsi removed ads that were being displayed in the suspect chat rooms, but continued to advertise elsewhere on Yahoo. But Atlanta-based Georgia-Pacific, the maker of Brawny paper towels, removed all its ads from Yahoo, company spokeswoman, Robin Keegan said.

"We were absolutely horrified to find out about this," Keegan said, adding that the company had no knowledge that their ads were appearing in the chat rooms in question.

Some users who obeyed the site\'s rules were upset by Yahoo\'s decision to close down all user-created sites, posting online complaints about the decision.

Source

I think all child predators need to randomly combust into a fiery, painful death.

Yahoo! Chat = scum of the universe

I used to go there when I first discovered the interweb when I was 12... Total freak show.

[Cerberus]

I play in some yahoo games rooms, and the shit that floods the chat area there, you would not believe if you had never seen it with your own eyes.

There games rooms have no age restrictions on them whatsoever, and anyone who knows how to use a computer can access them. When they get in there, they are greeted with this shit.

Some of the stuff I have seen, ranges from hacking/cracking sites (that ultimately have trojans and all manner of shite on them, to porn.

I did notice yesterday that these rooms were inaccessable for a time, and I wondered if they had actually done this or not, but when I went in there today, the usual porn/hack/crack spamming was still there, so I guess they haven\'t dealt with the issue.

Yahoo sucks big salty balls in my mind, msn closed all it\'s chat rooms down for due to this kind of crap.

Yahoo doesn\'t give a flying fuck about what goes on in their games/chat rooms, they just care about numbers, the higher the numbers, the more they can get for advertising. They make announcements like this periodically to make people think they are dealing with it, but in truth, the likelyhood is that they are all sitting on their fat arses flicking paperclips into the rubbish bins.

I myself have contacted yahoo on many an occasion trying to get them to do something about this kind of thing, and I shit you not, each time I did, I got the same automated response thanking me of my contacting them, they will look into it in the next few days, and as sure as god made meat balls, nothing ever comes of it.

They could sort all of this out within days if they wanted to, by appointing administrators to watch over their rooms, other games and chat providers do it, why can\'t yahoo?

Sure, there will be loads of rooms that need admin\'ing, but they would easily find enough people to do it, they just couldn\'t care less.

PS. If I had kids, there is no way I\'d let them enter a yahoo chat room, that\'s how bad I think it is. I\'d stick it on the parental control list before they could ever get the chance.

I used to play Yahoo! Pool but then it got gay because people started clans and shit.

[Jumpman]

Where will I go to cyber with 13 year old boys pretending to be cross dressing bitches?

[Cerberus]

Originally posted by Jumpman
Where will I go to cyber with 13 year old boys pretending to be cross dressing bitches?

Are you leaving?

[Jumpman]

Originally posted by Cerberus
Are you leaving?

yes

Originally posted by Jumpman
Where will I go to cyber with 13 year old boys pretending to be cross dressing bitches?

The bathroom mirror?

[Kurt Angle]

where will Michael Jackson go now?

[Cerberus]

Originally posted by Kurt Angle
where will Michael Jackson go now?

He could come here, jumpman is leaving us aparently.

ol\' whacko could "slip in" almost unnoticed (as he is rumoured to be able to do very well *cough*)