Microsoft Has Taken Up the Mantle Against Revenge Porn

Microsoft Has Taken Up the Mantle Against Revenge Porn

We continue to see news of non-consensual pornography, or what is commonly referred to as “revenge porn“, hit our feeds and social network streams every so often.

However, a couple of days ago, this particular report on revenge porn I encountered is something positive.

Jacqueline Beauchere, Microsoft‘s Chief Online Safety Officer, has announced on a blog post last Wednesday that Microsoft “will remove links to photos and videos from search results in Bing, and remove access to the content itself when shared on OneDrive or Xbox Live, when we are notified by the victim”. This great news follows Google‘s public statement of its stance against revenge porn last month.

Beauchere has more to say on this matter:

While people have been able to report to us in the past, we’ve set up a new reporting Web page, available today, to make it easy for victims to let us know about these particular photos and videos. It is available in English now and will be expanded to other languages in the coming weeks. When we remove links or content, we will do so globally.

Clearly, this reporting mechanism is but one small step in a growing and much-needed effort across the public and private sectors to address the problem. It’s important to remember, for example, that removing links in search results to content hosted elsewhere online doesn’t actually remove the content from the Internet – victims still need stronger protections across the Web and around the world.

The form Beauchere is referring to is the “Report Content to Microsoft” page, which is found in their Support subdomain. It is said that translated versions of the report page will be made available soon.

Below are helpful links you can refer back to or share to friends and family members for their reference:

Stay safe, everyone!

Jovi Umawing

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jovi Umawing

Knows a bit about everything and a lot about several somethings. Writes about those somethings, usually in long-form.