"South Korea: Google fails to tackle online sexual abuse content despite complaints by survivors," 8 Dec 2023

[...] Survivors attempting to remove non-consensual sexually explicit videos from the internet told Amnesty International they continued to find Google’s removal request process difficult to navigate, incomplete and unresponsive.

[...] Google has made alterations and updates to many of the problematic pages identified. For example, there is now a single button to access the “Report a legal removal issue’ form within some forms. However, survivors say these changes have not made their situation any easier.

They said problems remained with confusing forms, a lack of transparency in the reporting process and Google’s failure to adequately address survivors’ trauma.

[...] In March 2020, a group of South Korean journalists exposed the existence of eight secret chat rooms on messaging app Telegram where thousands of videos of women and girls containing non-consensual sexually explicit content were being shared and sold without their consent using cryptocurrency. [...]

Despite the jailing of some “Nth Room” chat operators, some content connected with it still shows up on Google search results.

[...] On 5 December 2023, Google told Amnesty International it had “a longstanding commitment to fighting technology-facilitated gender-based harassment and violence”. It acknowledged the difficulties survivors faced navigating removal requests “from multiple online platforms and services”, and pointed to the creation of its Transparency Center to help users understand its product policies and its Help Center page, created in response to the South Korean Telecommunications Business Act.