April 13, 2001

6:49 AM

Well that didn't last long....Yahoo caves in and renegs on the porn thing.
posted by briank (13 comments total)

This I don't quite get. Yahoo has been selling porn through their stores (which aren't really their stores, they just host them) and their auctions for quite some time. All of the sudden a newspaper reporter stumbles upon a video for sale and thinks he has a major scoop. Now Yahoo is removing all the porn from it's sites? How do they expect to make any money!? Ad space isn't selling and the only thing that's making money on the web is porn. Maybe they are being crafty and will just seel it through a "different" company (but one they own). Hmmmm.
posted by fresh-n-minty at 7:17 AM on April 13, 2001

the real story is, the demographic studies came back and it seems nobody is willing to pay for naked pix of that outback-dwelling, bucktoothed d00d with the pillows all over his trailer. or his dog either.
posted by quonsar at 7:22 AM on April 13, 2001

Nah, it was the boycott threat. They must have run the numbers and found that despite higher profits it just wasn't a big enough percentage of their business to be worth the outcry.
posted by dhartung at 9:06 AM on April 13, 2001

I dunno, this looks like porn to me. I think they shouldn't have caved in so easily. I can't help but imagine that the only people complaining are middle-aged born-again women from the mid-west.
posted by waxpancake at 9:14 AM on April 13, 2001

As stated in the press release, the sex-related merchandise was removed from Y! Shopping, Y! Classifieds, and Y! Auctions. The directory was not mentioned at all in this.
posted by valerie at 9:43 AM on April 13, 2001

"middle-aged born-again women from the mid-west"

These ladies call the shots in this country. The fact that even the threat of a protest by these folks could shutdown an established business segment is food for thought.

But the thing that really gets me is that the threat of protest by liberal, non-Christian groups would have had no such outcome.

Maybe I'm missing something here but I'm not happy that the special interest group that gets the most results is "middle-aged born-again women from the mid-west".

Maybe I'm just jealous.
posted by y6y6y6 at 10:07 AM on April 13, 2001

Sure. The middle-aged born again women from the midwest spend a lot more money than granola-fed liberals living in trees in the PacNW.
posted by SpecialK at 11:28 AM on April 13, 2001

But what about college-educated, jet-setting, queer-rights-marching, technologically savvy affirmative actionists from the Northeast? We spend tons.
posted by jpoulos at 12:03 PM on April 13, 2001

Is that one any good?
posted by solistrato at 2:15 PM on April 13, 2001

> Maybe I'm missing something here but I'm not happy that
> the special interest group that gets the most results is
> "middle-aged born-again women from the mid-west".

Where I work (a public hospital, a bit over 1000 PC seats) the powers considered telling people not to use Yahoo as their homepage any longer, and even telling the blocking service (Bess) to bit-bucket Yahoo. This was a lawyers + administration move that had nothing to do, so far as I can tell, with women, the midwest, middle age, or the condition of being born again, and everything to do with liability (sexual harassment and friends) and bad PR. Do most businesses let their workers spend the day wanking at pr0n sites using company machines and the company T3? I expect quite a few large organizations would react just as this one did (or was about to, had Yahoo not suddenly got small-and-shriveled on the subject.)
posted by jfuller at 3:34 PM on April 13, 2001

> But what about college-educated, jet-setting,
> queer-rights-marching, technologically savvy affirmative
> actionists from the Northeast? We spend tons.

One imagines Yahoo asking itself "How well did this demographic defend its right to go dripping down 42nd street?"
posted by jfuller at 3:39 PM on April 13, 2001

Personally, I am offended and mortified that Yahoo! might be a reneger. I really don't see what race has to do with this.
posted by kindall at 3:46 PM on April 13, 2001