Tag Archives | pranks

Porn Prank Pesters YouTube

Pranksters from the Web sites 4chan  and eBaum’s world converged on Google’s YouTube video service today for a stunt organizers called “Porn Day,” Ars Technica is reporting.

Porn day participants “carpet bombed” YouTube with pornographic videos throughout the day as YouTube struggled to remove the offending content. Explicit images remained in video thumbnails even after the videos were removed, and it will take several days for the images to be purged from YouTube’s search results, Cnet is reporting.

Google usually relies upon community ratings to flag offensive content, but it took the unusual step of disabling certain channels that were targeted by the pranksters, according to the report.

The pranksters proved that YouTube was vulnerable to abuse, but YouTuthe site’s mechanisms for removing undesirable content the worked effectively enough. It is also unlikely that “Porn Day” organizers could sustain the effort day in and day out.

While it certainly touches on how the anonymity of the Internet can be abused, the prank was just that – a prank. Whether it was funny or not remains in the eye of the beholder.

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