OT: Carpet Bombing Pranksters TARGET YouTube for PornDay

[Lisa Kachold]

YouTube is the latest target for pranksters looking to amuse
themselves. Today, May 20, has been deemed "Porn Day" by denizens of
4chan and eBaum's World, with an organized group of users from the
sites uploading video clips of explicit, adult content en masse in an
attempt to overwhelm the search results. In actuality, it appears that
content was prematurely uploaded on the afternoon of the 19th. YouTube
has already taken some steps to fight back, but it's disturbingly easy
to find stuff you really don't want to see, and the uploaders are
changing tactics.

As one might expect, the pornographic clips are being uploaded without
any indication that they're for adult eyes only, making them easy to
happen upon by casual searchers. As the upload-fest has progressed,
users are also uploading what seems to be legitimate content, but is
in fact a porn video that simply has 20-30 seconds of non-porn content
(a newscast, an interview) at the beginning.

YouTube, for its part, has been fast to remove the video clips for
violations of the site's terms of use, but we are still able to find
porn videos posted a few hours ago. Even those that are found and
removed leave porn residue, since the XXX-rated videos are still
showing up in searches and their explicit thumbnails remain in plain
view for anyone to see.

"It may take some time for video search results and thumbnail images
to disappear from the site," Google spokesperson Scott Rubin told Ars.
"Typically, this should not take more than a couple of days, but the
videos themselves are no longer viewable."

The lag time between video and thumbnail removal seems to be ruffling
the feathers of some users, particularly those with kids who use the
site. After all, it's pretty easy to run across these thumbnails even
though their corresponding videos have been removed, and it's pretty
clear what's going on at first glance.

YouTube is getting a little inadvertent help in combating the
uploading, thanks to the fact that the earliest posters all used the
same tags (for instance, marblecake, jonas brothers [search at your
own risk]), which made identifying videos easier. Many uploaders are
also posting links to their "victories" on the forums, making it
easier to find videos that way as well.

Update: An eBaum's World representative contacted Ars saying that the
site was in no way involved with the Porn Day prank.


http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/05/4chan-ebaumsworld-carpet-bombing-youtube-with-porn-videos.ars

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