Increasing adult content on the internet has raised concerns of the internet community. China has voiced out this concern and it has cornered Google and 18 more websites for their irresponsible behavior in this regard. These major internet players have not done anything to curb this menace from the internet. China is pressurizing these internet giants to take positive steps towards filtering the sexual content from the internet searches.
China has recommended that if websites promote vulgar content, they should be penalized and if the fail to comply with the norms, they should be taken for task and they should be shut down. This kind of reaction though have come from various quarters at different points of time, it is this time China’s voice has exhibited such great aggression in their stand regarding vulgar content online. In China, such sites are illegal but at the same time, it has one of the largest number of porn sites. For this reason, they are exhorting the internet giants to take internet censorship seriously and filter websites that contain vulgar content.
Chinese authorities have clearly listed the transgressions of the websites that they have identified are supposedly ignoring the internet censorship. Their report also states that Google image search is one of the major sources of vulgar sites. Google seemingly has not taken any action in this regard even after several notices to the company. In China, Baidu is the top search engine and Google follows Baidu.
To defend itself Google has stated that, there are “clear policies to protect freedom of expression while not allowing illegal content on our sites in China and elsewhere around the world”. However, Google has admitted that it has not taken proactive steps to filter vulgar content. On the other hand, it uses automatic filters to take care of the websites that are of adult nature.
The Chinese government is very clear about its internet policies and what should be made accessible to their citizens. Besides filtering adult content users are also stopped from accessing anti communist content and policies or content that celebrate democracy. Chinese government also has its own filtering system to monitor and filter the internet content. China does not stop blaming the internet giants for allowing adult content in their searches, but they also take decisive steps against people who do not comply with the rules. These actions also include arrests.
The question however, is it just the problem of China or is it a global issue that everyone should take part to stop vulgar and adult material from spreading across the web. One of the problems here is that the search engines cannot possibly differentiate between adults and children. So whatever is accessible to adults is also accessible to children. This can eventually result in lot of social problems in a few years time if not curbed now.