Google has notified its advertisers that they will no longer accept ads containing explicit sexual content. A letter to AdWords describing their revised advertising policy reads, "Beginning in the coming weeks, we'll no longer accept ads that promote graphic depictions of sexual acts including, but not limited to, hardcore pornography; graphic sexual acts including sex acts such as masturbation; genital, anal, and oral sexual activity."
Pornography is addictive, and children are exposed to graphic sexual content as young as 11 years old on average. Morality in Media (MIM) reports that over half of all divorce cases cite pornography as a reason for ending the marriage, and the consumption of pornography has lead to increased violence against women, including rape and sexual slavery.
Google, the most popular search engine on the internet, is on MIM's "Dirty Dozen" list for the leading websites which contribute to sexual exploitation. LifeSiteNews reports that Morality in Media met with Google in May to further discuss how pornography causes sexual exploitation, and Google thereafter announced that they would no longer accept pornographic advertisements or any advertisements which link to pornographic websites on their search engine. Google has also agreed to remove porn and sexually explicit applications from their app store as well.
Morality in Media hopes that Google will continue to make strides to remove pornographic content from Google Search, Google Images, and YouTube as well. While YouTube has a "Safe Mode" and allows users to flag and report sexually explicit videos which violate YouTube's policies for sexual content, MIM reports that these policies are still widely unenforced - "We applaud Google for these important strides forward, but continue to call on them to improve their policies and actions," they write.
