Yahoo shut down all their user-created chat rooms today because they've been heavily criticized for unwittingly placing ads in chatrooms that people adults were using to solicit sex with children.
I haven't thought heavily about this, but at first glance, I don't see this as a defeat for free speech in any way. This is a corporation. A corporation should not have any power to inhibit free speech, but it doesn't mean it is required to create public platforms for new forms of free speech, either.
Yes, I know what the chatrooms were being used for, and no, I don't say "free speech" to defend the exploits of the kid-soliciting adults. I'm speaking more generally about the "right" for a member of a corporate website to have a user-created chatroom.
Anyone can create a chatroom elsewhere on private servers. No legislation was passed outlawing chatrooms. If it ever goes that direction, you bet I'd oppose it. But this is simply a corporation making a cost/benefit analysis and determining that the cost (financial, ethical, or moral) of giving child molesters a platform exceeded the benefit (marketing) of being able to say "we have user-created chatrooms!"
Finally, I think the societal benefit of yahoo offering user-created chatrooms is far less than it used to be. These were pretty cool internet-changing features back in 1998. Now you've got all sorts of peer-to-peer apps for chat, videochat, four-way videoconferencing, etc. In short, I don't really see this as a big deal.
Posted by tunesmith at June 23, 2005 06:31 PM
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