Nudity crackdown: Google and Reddit to ban some explicit content

Reddit and Google are taking a tougher stance against nudity to prevent their services from turning into online peep shows.

Social-networking and news site Reddit says it will remove photos, videos and links with explicit content if the person in the image hasn’t given permission for it to be posted. And Google, the Internet’s most powerful company, is going to ban most nude photos and video from publicly accessible sites on its popular Blogger service.

The crackdown marks a shift in attitude for two services that have traditionally been freewheeling forums where users could literally let it all hang out. The lax approach has opened the door for nude and sexually explicit photos and video to be posted on Reddit and Blogger, even if the subjects featured in the images intended them to remain private.

Until now, Reddit has had a hands-off approach to privacy, largely allowing its 160 million users to police their own forums within certain guidelines such as no child pornography or spam. The change comes about six months after hackers obtained nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities and posted them to social media sites including Reddit and Twitter.

Without specifically calling out Reddit or Twitter, Lawrence lashed out at the sites that permitted nude photos to be posted of her. She likened the unauthorized use of photos of her body as a “sex crime.”