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Yahoo! Closes User Created Chat Rooms
karvind writes "Chatmag News reports that Yahoo! has disabled all the User-created Chat rooms. According to Yahoo's chat log page:'The ability to publish user-created chat rooms in the public Yahoo! Chat directory is currently unavailable. We are working on improvements to this service to enhance the user experience and compliance with our Terms of Service'. This may be true but Yahoo! is also facing a $10 million lawsuit that accuses it of cashing in on some disturbing chat rooms. The companies are paying huge fees for their ads to appear on Yahoo!. But many are now canceling those ads because of the report."
Well what did they think was going to happen? Opening up chat rooms to the public with I'm assuming very little moderation is just asking for trouble. The article says people asked to become moderators but Yahoo never responded.
I've never used Yahoo chat before. Do they have very many non user created rooms? Sounds like they just destroyed their chat service.
But you're not a child or young teen. For the most part, kids live on Yahoo and AOL chat rooms and IM. I think the big whoop here is the fact that fucktards are using them to prey on kids.
My sig of choice is Marlboro
Gee...can you hear me way back there in the 1950's? Why is it yahoo's responsibility to keep children out of adult rooms (I'm talking adult rooms in general, not kiddie porn rooms). Where are the parents? Why are they letting their children go online, unsupervised? I'm sick and tired of people wanting the government or buisness to protect them from the big bad evil world that's out there. PS. this was more a random rant, than anything personally directed at you.
"Does your computer have IP on it?"
They need to monitor their kid. Especially chatrooms.
Yahoo lets any A-hole create any stupid chatroom.
The only problem with Yahoo is that they don't have one single customer service email address. If they do they sure as hole don't listen NOR DO THEY EVER REPLY WITH A HUMAN REPLY EMAIL. So they could give a fuck if Al-queda had a chat room on there.
To be honest, if children were not in those chat rooms, they would dry up. Besides, who would care if a bunch of middle aged men were all sitting around flashing their "packages" to each other on webcam? Remove the children from the forumla, and the rest of it is moot. Which brings us back to the original question: Where are the parents while the children are watching middle aged men on the computer?
"Does your computer have IP on it?"
See kids, this is why you shouldn't use Yahoo, and discover IRC instead.
.. its not good for you, you know.
All this control over your speech
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
It seems what really got Yahoo's attention was when the sponsors pointed out that this was in direct violation of the Ad contracts that they had signed with Yahoo and until Yahoo fixes is they are going to loose a lot of money.
Speeking as the parent of 2 pre-teen girls I am very happy to see these kind of chatrooms gone. (And in case anyone asks we don't let the girls on the net without parental oversight)
Erlang Developer and podcaster
How many times did they say CHILD SEX ROOMS in that report. I love how they act like the advertisments were purposely placed on those particular chat rooms.
First off, the "custom" chat rooms were only down for a few days. Of course now, they apparently have some "restriction" on them. Possibly some hacks have found ways to create "custom" rooms again, as the regular yahoo messenger does not allow it right now. Secondly, yahoo has always forced users to view one advertisement before jumping into chat room mode. So, to accuse them of using controversial chat rooms to market thier crap is a real lame ass accusation. If anything, they could be accused of not moderating thier chat rooms. However, I do believe the Yahoo Messenger software agreement limits liability for this somewhat. Besides that, though, if someone is going to chat about something "inappropriate" on the internet, they will find a way, even if that way is hopping on yahoo chat, IMing "wanna talk about codeword?" and then jumping over to third party product.
And could you please enlighten me as to what is exactly the chance that a 12 year old girl would enter a chatroom named "Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys"?
I tell you, it's nothing more than hysteria at its best.
Real life is overrated.
there were also lots of arabic rooms that the Al Queada may have been hanging out in,
Just reading this comment from you is scary. But perhaps not scary in the way you think... It's scary that your first thought about an arabic chat room is as a possible host for "Al Quaeda". Those darned terrorsts are everywhere now, aren't they? And yet 5 years ago you never even knew they existed.
Oh, but because I suggest that perhaps arabic chat rooms are NOT somewhere for Al-Quaeda to hang out, that must make me a terrorist too...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
My only problem is that some TX congressman already talking about new legislation that is needed. Why? It seems the current system worked:
1. disturbing (but not yet proven illegal actually) practice exposed by media,
2. business reacted by pulling support,
3. Yahoo shut down service.
All seems to be ok. Please someone remind that congressman that there are real problems in his state which need immediate attention (like half of the children are without health insurance*) and work on something USEFUL.
Matyas
P.S. * Are not most of his constituents pro-life, actually? I thought that means that all life (all children) should be entitled to the protection of their health/life on their own right (against illness and death) even if their parents cannot or do not want to get health insurance for them.
Sad unforunately, had a friend who ran a Linux chatroom and got lots of newbs who got help there. Not possible anymore, I guess he'll have to move his room to "Single Again!"
Yep. Unfortunately, all the "CLIKC HERE TO SEE ME NUDE ON MY CAM HTTP://MEGABUCKS.COM" or "CLICK HERE TO SEE MY PRETEEN DAUGHTER NUDE HTTP://PORN.COM" will make it impossible for users to get help.
Closing private rooms for policy compliance? What about all the spam and stuff in pub rooms?
Actually if Al Quaeda hung out in these rooms, we should keep them open by all means. Haven't you heard they only talk in person and don't even use cell phones? We got satellites aimed at listening to these people, if they only would speak up. I mean what's better than having them type up their shit in a chat room, and then just run in through some translation program? Free intelligence anyone, without wasting arabic-speaking-undercover-precious-time?
If you're always with them why do you need yahoo to get rid of the chatrooms?
I am trolling
Yahoo has chat rooms associated with their yahoo groups - these are still active. They don't display ads on the way in. Group use ads when you view threads - every n items you read, you get to view (ignore) an ad.
I didn't realize that yahoo also had these ad-hoc chat rooms but that appears to be what's been shut down.
As several other posters have remarked, this kind of adult/child dialog is nothing new. Way back in the day, when CompuServe was master of the on-line universe and a 2400 baud modem was da bomb, I recall watching my 7 yo daughter chatting on-line on night. When I noticed someone say 'would it matter to you if I was a 27 yo male', I pulled the plug on her chat and permanently shut down her access to chat rooms.
While I don't condone pedophilia, PARENTS ARE OBLIGATED TO DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES HOW THEY WANT TO MANAGE THEIR CHILDREN'S ACCESS TO THE INTERNET. Please do NOT ask the government or buinesses to become the ethics police, that's MY job.
I realize it's damn near impossible, and not very healthy, to monitor your kids 24/7, but teaching your kids right and wrong is what we get paid to do - you pop one out and you get the responsibility that comes with the sex.
I agree. A room title is nothing. It is NOT an implication that there's something evil going on. It's an "ad" to get you interested in coming in the room.
The examples in the article could be reworded, and NOT sound evil...
Change "9-17-Year-Olds Wantin' Sex" to "9 normal 17 year olds"
Change "Younger Girls 4 Older Guys" to "Younger Girls 4 Bush or Kerry" (both of whom were older guys)
Change "Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys" to "Girls 13 and under who respect their fathers"
Change "Girls 13 And Up For Much Older Man" to "Girls 13 and up researching prehistoric man"
Change "Girls 8 to 13 Watch Boys (In A Particular Sex Act)" to "8 Girls to 13 Boys with Watches"
It's a friggin ROOM NAME, not an admission of some act! Read it any way you want!
An example to prove my point: (I hate to make this political...) if you saw a chat room called "We Love War", and you "went into" the room to a) observe the conversation, or b) refute nonsense, does that make you a War Lover?
I bet the vast majority of the rooms in question were set up by law enforcement people anyway! Should we be investigating our police forces?
Yes, there are people preying on children via the internet. But here's a clue: the ones who succeed at it are sneaky about it. You'll find them in chatrooms with names like "Harry Potter Chat 4 Kidz", not in "9-17-Year-Olds Wantin' Sex".
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I have seen 14 year old girls enter chat site specifcially to find a older man. Perhaps it is just to tease. Perhaps they do not understand the ramifications, i.e. the man is looking to have sex with an underage, preferable virgin, girl. But sometimes I wonder if they are making dates they intend to keep, with the pupose of having sex. Certainly in a world where these girls have children by 13, and some parents think this is a good thing, as they are now someone elses responsibility, it is something we have to watch for.
At the 11-13 year age range, I have noted that the assumption is that they have some sort of protected status. They often assume that they can get away with certain things, like appearing in public almost naked, becuase everyone knows 'they do not mean it'.
I assume that parent have to be somewhat tolerant of such behavior, while protecting thier kids from the tiny percentage fo the population that might take advatage of such naivite.
Inevitably, these guys are going to come up with legislation that will be impossible to implement. Just like the library net-nanny laws, which are inevitably going to be doomed to "I thought my kid would be safe if I left him at the library for 4 hours while I did my shopping and a manicure!" lawsuits, it's not going to be possible to screen each and every room name in every language created. Especially, if like IRC, they're simply created automatically.
See if you can write a regular expression that will block all of these channels. I'll throw in some easy ones as well as some that require actually knowing the subject matter (if you don't get it, try google and ageofconsent.com):
Let's all have sex with little girls!!!1!
kome ere 2 c lil kitz
young kittens 4 men
t33nz p1><
Jelly Bracelets R us
Chilean Wife pix
tennis player porn
erotaisou na shashin (I see from other posts that yahoo supposedly supported arabic, so they'd probably have supported japanese as well, and in that case you'll have to match all possible combinations of the japanese alphabets that create that concept)
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
When MSN closed their chat services in 2003, where do they think all of the children and pedophiles went? The pedophiles didn't just disappear and the children certainly didn't go back to riding bicycles. All they did was shift the burden of dealing with the problem to other chat services.
If an inappropriate or illegal room appeared on my service I would certainly take action, but there exist private rooms on my service which I do not monitor for privacy reasons. Lawsuits such as the one Yahoo is facing may spell the eventual end for commercial chat services and perhaps even domestically run IRC networks. My personal thoughts on the matter are that chat services should do what they can to prevent such activity but there needs to be a clear line drawn on just what a service can be accountable for. The phone company for example cannot be held responsible for a crime that is conducted or planned over its network.
Like ' Americans for the 2nd amendment '.. or ' people who dislike yahoo's service terms' ...
Somehow I think this is yet another case of 'but its for the children' nonsence.
Yes, i realize its a commercial company and we have no real free speech rights there. But its still somewhat concerning how people toss the concept aside. It *should* be universal.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Maybe. I just find it hard to imagine that the citd chatroom "Girls 13 And Under For Older Guys" actually has any real women, let alone girls, in it, aside from perhaps (older) hookers and female FBI agents.
So why do you care?
C17H21NO4
The intent of my wording was exactally what the constitution would have been designed to protect:
"American citizens, protesting the destruction of the 2nd amendment by the government"
As a side note, the excerpt '..or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..' clearly states we do have the right of free speech as an individual.. The directive that congress is not supposed to abridge it, means we do have it..
The key to a lot of the constition is paying attention 'or', not 'and'.. Rights, in general, are not mutually exclusive, nor modified..
( but i know, we are getting somewhat OT here.. )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well, regardless of whether 12 year old girls really do or don't visit these types of chat rooms - I think the real issue comes down to advertisers unwittingly having their products tied to rooms with these titles.
As far as I'm concerned, there's really no point or value in trying to make it crime to have such a chat room. Anyone, at any time, can create a "chat room" using one of the instant messenger programs out there, give it this type of "topic" and invite random people to join. Same goes for IRC, where anyone could throw a server online and make any channels they want on it - even if you somehow banned them from using the most well-known/populated IRC servers.
If you don't want your pre-teen chatting with creepy older guys who want sex with them, then a little *education* and *parenting* is in order. Legislation won't substitute.
But there IS a very real and understandable complaint when you, as an advertiser, pay your money for product placement and then your product ends up being placed where you never agreed to the placement at all in your contract.
Am I the only one who can see that as net/sms-speak gets stronger in the English-speaking world, the closer the English-speaking world moves toward becoming the Dutch-speaking world?
Back to the topic, it's as simple as being a good host when you have a party...There is not a huge problem with the internet or chat-rooms-gone-wild...It's just more real-life the people at Yahoo et al have to deal with. If you have a party, you need to expect that sh*t happens. Somebody's gonna puke in the terrarium. Somebody's gonna put a ciggie out on the floor.
Part of the reality of having a party involves some vigilance on the part of the host, or it might get out of control. Same goes for hosts like Yahoo and this whole topic. Ya see a kid-pr0n or hate chatroom, delete it. Barf lake in the hallway? Clean it up. Weather they wanna go the step further of bitch-slapping the bad guest, is a different matter....
The alternative is to stop having parties....But parties are so much fun, isn't the vigilance and acceptance that sh*t's gonna happen worth it?
All you need is lurv.
Are not most of his constituents pro-life, actually? I thought that means that all life (all children) should be entitled to the protection of their health/life on their own right
"Pro-life" is just a PR term for "anti-abortion." It doesn't mean these people are "pro" anything. Most of the people I know who are rabidly against abortion are just as rabidly against doing anything for the single mother. They want her to suffer for her own sins. If you bring up the subject of the child being an innocent victim of the resulting poverty or whatever, they will immediately fall back to the line that the government can't run everybody's life, people have to take responsibility for themselves, maybe you'd rather live in Russia, etc, etc. I've concluded that it's hopeless to argue. The only strategy worth pursuing is to win.
You mean like the 11-13 year old girls in bikinis down on the street corner here in Sacramento? The ones shaking what boobs they have and shaking their asses at the passing cars? The ones that are doing this to try to entice people (men?) to pay for a "car wash" (obviously not for the pleasure of watching wet bikini clad prepubecint girls rub down their car. The ones that are doing this with the endorsment and encouragement of our public schools to raise money for the sports program? After all sports in school teaches team work!