In early 2022, two Google policy staffers met with a trio of women victimized by a scam that resulted in explicit videos of them circulating onlineâincluding via Google search results. The women were among the hundreds of young adults who responded to ads seeking swimsuit models only to be coerced into performing in sex videos distributed by the website GirlsDoPorn. The site shut down in 2020, and a producer, a bookkeeper, and a cameraman subsequently pleaded guilty to sex trafficking, but the videos kept popping up on Google search faster than the women could request removals.
The women, joined by an attorney and a security expert, presented a bounty of ideas for how Google could keep the criminal and demeaning clips better hidden, according to five people who attended or were briefed on the virtual meeting. They wanted Google search to ban websites devoted to GirlsDoPorn and…
