Toral: Searching for scandals
-A A +ATuesday, July 10, 2012
MY RECENT teaching activities gave me the opportunity to present a challenge: to use search engines and track those who have been using keywords like “Pinay sex scandal” to rank and profit from the traffic.
But in the course of these activities, something is also noticeable; there are bloggers who have capitalized on the keywords to generate traffic and earn from it.
Some even link to sites where the sex files and videos can be downloaded.
Even more disturbing is how organized some x-rated sites can get on how they promote adult content, utilizing various social media channels, tapping into various link revenue programs, and even using black hat techniques to generate links back to their site.
It is sad is when site owners and bloggers only see the profit-gaining side of things and do not take into consideration legal risks of propagating “sex scandal” type of content. Not to mention, the emotional anguish that the people in these videos are experiencing, even if most of them are unnamed.
To stop online pornography, vigilance from concerned Filipino Internet and social media users is required. It has to be organized and the attention of those who propagate such content should be called and pushed to shut down their sites for violating web hosting service terms, including prohibitions on promoting pornographic content.
In the course of investigation, we should be able to spot which accounts and users are interlinked in their activities, acting like a syndicate (mostly coming from several local provincial areas), ensuring that their content will catch attention and be downloaded. These are the ones that we need to be worried about.
I am currently reading the book “Webbots, Spiders, and Screen Scrapers” by Michael Schrenk, which tells us how to develop Internet agents to capture and aggregate content. What I like about Schrenk’s book and its accompanying website is that it has sample scripts on how to put content together that deals with sites resistant to crawling and scraping. It is time to go beyond Google Alerts when capturing data.
Changing perceptions and search engine results requires generation of content by writers and bloggers. We need new key phrases to overturn phrases like “Filipina for marriage”, “Filipina for sale”, “Filipina for rent”, “Filipina for hire”, as the most suggested ones in Google when you type “Filipina for”.
It is now 2012. If we want change to happen, let us use our influence through social media and crack down on sites that have been profiting from key phrases that put the perception of “Filipina” and Pinays down.
Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on July 11, 2012.
Business
Forum rules: Do not use obscenity. Some words have been banned. Stick to the topic. Do not veer away from the discussion. Be coherent and respectful. Do not shout or use CAPITAL LETTERS!
