Yahoo Chat Room Crackdown Affects Non-Sex Rooms (Users Irate At Loss Of Chat Rooms)

HOUSTON -- A crackdown on chat rooms aimed at children is being felt around the world, affecting those that have nothing to do with sex, the Local 2 Troubleshooters reported Thursday.

Hundreds of innocent chat rooms were taken offline by Yahoo in addition to those targeted for sex with children.

Now, those innocent computer users are wondering how they will fill the massive void on the Internet.

National newspapers, radio talk shows and television networks have picked up the story the Troubleshooters broke on Monday. For people in other cities, it finally shed light on why chat room screens are blank.

But that's no help to people who have nowhere to turn for important information they've always received from clean chat rooms.

"It's not right. It's not right. And Yahoo needs to address this quickly," said Rod Mitchell, a local chat room creator.

Mitchell hosted a chat room called "Indiefilmworkers" for casting and crew on movies for eight years. That's all changed for the Spring man and the 869 other members of his chat room forum.

"A lot of times, they like to get insight. If they're in Austin, San Antonio, New York, they want to find out about Houston, and so they'll chat with each other. They can no longer do that," Mitchell said.

The same hole in the Internet exists for hundreds of other rooms with a wide array of interests, from hobbies to jobs to studies.

That's because the nation's most-used Internet site, Yahoo, shut down hundreds, potentially thousands, of chat rooms after the Local 2 Troubleshooters exposed what's really going on in those rooms.

They're called "user-created rooms." Local 2 found Yahoo displaying advertising from major corporations in rooms geared only toward sex with children.

In those rooms, Local 2 posed as a 13-year-old girl and Houston men lined up at the Troubleshooters' door after arranging sex meetings. Countless men tried to display pornography with children.

The big sponsors pulled their advertising because of the station's reports and Yahoo removed all of the rooms, leaving nothing but blank screens where the rooms used to be.

"People are irate and don't know where to go. They are casual Internet users," said Peter Carr, with Chatmag.com.

Carr runs a Web site called www.ChatMag.com, which is a registry of chat rooms and advice. He said hundreds of thousands of chat room users are logging in, wondering how to adjust their whole lives.

"A lot of them feel betrayed that Yahoo did not give them prior warning," Carr said.

Yahoo is still not commenting, saying only that it is working on improving chat rooms so that more users comply with Yahoo's terms of service, which ban harmful material with minors.

Online ads account for most of Yahoo's revenue, and investors are noticing. They are clicking on links to the Troubleshooters story, posted on various stock-quote Web pages.

I just read this article after coming across it by chance, so I figure Ill add my ten cents worth...
I have been a chatter in Yahoo since 1999..fairly a decent amount of time. In all of my years in Yahoo, never has it been more out of control that it is now. No matter who is the main issue of the day - pedophilles, attention seekers, clowns, or aspiring script kiddies who spend their free time in Yahoo booting people - there has always been issues in Yahoo Chat. While I commend Yahoo for " cracking down " on some of the illegal activities of some chatters, they've taken the easy way out to shut people up and in the end accomplished nothing.
First up..the Yahoo Group who was hosting nude images of minors. Yahoo claims that it did not endorse this and demanded users of Yahoo Groups to abide by their TOS. Too bad they never take the time to glance over some of the more extreme Yahoo Groups that are created. The only reason they did that time was because a parent found their child's image on the group site...what they were doing in the first place looking at a Yahoo Group that hosts child porn is beyond me.
Second to bat.. Killing all user created chat rooms. Not a great move. Sure, they have shut down rooms with shall we say " unflavorable " content, but have they dealt with the issue directly? No. Instead of making their OWN user rooms to sit around and wank to child porn, they have now spread to the rooms that Yahoo created for use..thereby exposing EVERY chatter to their hobbies. Never did it occur to anyone that when a user created room named " Get your child sex here " that the name alone was a " HELLO...DO NOT ENTER " if you're not into that scene, yes this includes you teenage chatter.
Strike Three.. Since closing the user created rooms and killing off legal gatherings which could be said begins to tiptoe the edge of Online Rights lol, they have now banned teenage chatters from using their accounts in chat. This however stops nothing, as any smart teenager or monkey knows how to lie about the year they are born on the account creation page.
AND YOURE OUT YAHOO! - Yahoo, while taking an " oh so innocent " stance regarding sexual content in their chat rooms still allows the use of Chat Robots or bots as we call them to advertise heavily their porn sites in the chat rooms and spam private message boxes of any chatter in the room.

I could really go on and on about the issues of Yahoo and it's failure to create a healthy online chatting system, but allow me to sum it up. Yahoo Chat is a place that is full of hypocrisy on the part of its creators, and is a chat system so full of human idiocy that reigns supreme while Yahoo fails to step in and moderate. Had Yahoo used company moderators from the start, many of these issues could have possibly been avoided. When I called Yahoo to comment on the use of Moderators - I was informed that as long as Yahoo Chat was a free service they would not moderate the rooms because it was too costly. Well...hey whats a few chatters drooling over naked children as long as Yahoo can save a few bucks..meanwhile I believe that seems as Yahoo is paid for on a daily basis by it's sponsors, they make a poor statement.
A few ( 60 or ) of us Yahoo chatters have since moved on to using PalTalk which allows private rooms and moderator capabilities. While free accounts are available, chatters can elect to pay for an upgraded account to get more functions.
In-closing...Yahoo has always lacked foresight, and if they don't wake up and smell the coffee they will find that the only thing left in their chat rooms will be porn bots and people who just frankly think its all a bunch of **** and will go on continuing to ignore all the crap that goes on. When after all, its always entertaining to sit back and watch a bunch of blithering idiots argue over who's better... Jerry Springer or Dr. Phil ..God Please Yahoo.

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