A Case Study About the Removal of Adult/Explicit Content

Issue

A UK-based client reached out to our team with an urgent request to remove explicit videos featuring him that were posted over 2 decades ago. After withdrawing his consent after the shoot of the video, these sensitive videos were published without his knowledge or consent, violating his privacy rights. The situation was particularly distressing for the client as he could be easily identified in the footage through various means, including his name, physical appearance, and an alias he had used throughout social media. Given the personal nature of the content and its widespread availability online, the videos were having a profound and detrimental impact on both his personal life and professional career. 

The client expressed deep concern about the potential long-term consequences if the videos remained accessible, emphasising the urgent need for their removal from all online platforms.

What Actions Did Snapdragon Take

Considering how some porn/explicit sites are unresponsive, we opted to contact the 3 major search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo) within the United Kingdom (UK) and the whole of Europe (EU).

We conducted an extensive search across major search engines in the UK and Europe to identify and collate all instances of explicit content.

After collating all instances of explicit content, we identified that making an application under the UK Right to be Forgotten Law in accordance with Google’s Non-Consensual Pornography policy would be the best course of action.

Results

After 4 months and several applications made to each search engine, Snapdragon Media successfully removed over 1,000 links across three major search engines in the UK and Europe. As a result, the amount of infringing content has significantly reduced, minimising the visibility of the explicit content.

What we achieved was being able to restore the client’s online reputation and alleviate personal and professional concerns. To ensure these results remained the same, the client signed up for Continuous Monitoring, which allowed us to catch any reappearances of the content in the event they reindexed.