Yahoo! pulls plug on user created Chat Rooms -- for now

As cute as a petition is, I don't think a few thousand signatures are going to do anything when Yahoo is losing millions of dollars in advertising revenue.

I'm not sure what's going to become of this, but it will be interesting. Closing user created chat rooms certainly isn't the solution to the problem, but a mere obstacle. I am 20 years old but have been hanging out in The Girls' Club:1 (a teen room) for quite some time mainly because of the people I've met back when I was, you know, a teenager.

In any case, there are people in their 40s and 50s here all the time. Granted that I shouldn't be complaining because I haven't been a teen for about a month and a half now but 40s and 50s seems a little over the top to me. Oh yeah, I'm not looking for sex or to see nudes either. So the problem isn't just in user created rooms.

I'm not sure what the solution to the problem is other than shutting down all the rooms or hiring minimum wage employees to moderate the chat rooms. I'm not a big fan of chat room moderation since they all seem to be power hungry but I'm not sure what else Yahoo can do. I have a feeling that when all of this comes to an end, user created rooms will remain gone while Yahoo turns the other cheek and ignores the pedophilia going on in their rooms until another investigation happens into Yahoo’s rooms.

I know Yahoo! could go to the extreme of making people prove their age for adult profiles, (ie : using cc's) and that would help keep the kids from making adult profiles and entering adult chat but.. not sure how they would go about it to keep adults out of the kids rooms.I know at one time there were moderators in the kid's rooms, what happened to them? Did they become an unnecessary evil, or did Yahoo just not want to bother anymore? I don't care for moderators either, too much power goes to some of their heads, but I think moderation and proving age are possibly where we are headed. Yahoo! will not be able to get back their sponsers until they have done everything within their power to make sure things like this won't be happening again.I'm afraid this is gonna be a long troublesome time for Yahoo!

The Yahoo hangout room list at married1wannashare geocities has been yanked by yahoo/geocities. The new list home for the list is www.yahlist.net. Along with finding out that fetishes:39 is the foot fetish room and their are rooms for cuckolds, crossdressers etc. There is also information on stopping booting and alternative chat clients!!!

There is a very, very stupid post in this thread. As a self-proclaimed crusader of justice, a term that I just made up that doesn't actually mean much
of anything but sounds really, really cool, it is therefore both my duty and my pleasure to point it out. I will do so elloquently, and with ratoinal counterarguments.
For I am, after all, a crusader of justice.
Ahem.
I see a whole lot of blame being thrown on Yahoo! here but... what about the parents of these children? Where were the parents when their kids were surfing
these rooms?
Making dinner, having jobbs, supporting the family. Most parents dont' realize that their kids are chatting in chat rooms with strangers, and think it's to socialize with friends. It's an easy mistake to make.
Where are the parents when their kids make adult profiles and go into adult chatrooms?
...Please. Let's leave the arguments of 2002 and 2003 in 2002 and 2003. Which adult chatrooms are you talking about, exactly? How about "northwest teen:1" or "teenChat:13"? Because just as many kids get picked up in those ts in teh adult rooms. In fact, I'm going to go on a little limb, here, and say that they get picked up more. Why is that/ Simple. More actual teens. Only freaks are going to enter a room that says "girls 8&up4sex". That's not where teens want to go. The majority of them hang out... guess... in the yahoo public chat rooms. I could point out that the last time I checked you dont' need an adult profile to enter the adult rooms, but htat would be nitpicking.
Come on people, yeah Yahoo! should have taken precautions but lets put some of the responsibility where it should be, on the parents who allow their children to roam the internet freely as a babysitter so they don't have to take time out of their "busy" schedule to be bothered with them.
I think you have a bit of a point here, I think that parents could serve to be more interested in what their kids are doing on the 'net, I think that is important. But when your'e a parent, it's important to know what your kids are doing without being seen as "prying," and that's very difficult to do, especailly to hypersensative teenagers. The simplist thing to do is to install a keylogger onto the machine, get the kid's password, and view the IM archives when the kid's not home, but most parents don't know how to do that and that carries a huge risk of abuse with it besides.
Anyone who is a parent and has surfed the web and the chatrooms knows what
is out there .
How many of them do that/ How many of them can do that/ How many of them think to do that? How many of them even have an idea of the danger that could exist? We need to educate them, not blame them. THere's a difference. Parents are ignorant; Yahoo is merely appathetic. That's why Yahoo is more to blame. That, and because it would be much easier for Yahoo to clean up its act than it would be to get all of the parents of America to clean up theirs.
I truly believe some of these parents are going after Yahoo! to help sooth their own GUILTY conscience for not knowing what their kids were up to.
And you'd be wrong. a lot of these parents don't even konw that their kids are using chatrooms. Why would they? Why would the kids think to say it? Why would hte parents think to ask? As far as they're concerned, it's a way to talk to theirfriends that doesn't run up the phone bill.
First and foremost its the parents responsibility to protect their children,there are ways to set up computers so that children cannot get into certain areas of the net.
Not really. Oh sure, there are ways, butthey're not that easy, and oyu have to konw about them. Many of them, also, involve spending ca$h.
It's pretty sad that although Yahoo! could have done better they need to take the full blame for something that is partly caused due to poor parenting.
Alright, here's why Yahoo deserves everything they get. First of all, every chatroom you go into has all of the same features. That is to say, file transfer, voicechat,, instant messaging and webcams are available everywhere. What does htat mean? It means that even in the teen rooms, you can still use a web cam to transmit pornographic images to children. What possible use does a teen have for a webcam in a chatroom? None, really. But they're turned on anyway. That is inexcusable. This could, easily, be changed so that oyu had different levels of ability in different rooms. Yahoo chooses not to bother.
Second: no moderators. Again, it's simply inexcusable that this doesn't happen. It would be easy--so easy. Yahoo could hire basically anyone for minimum wage, or even just have it a volunteeer program, for people to monitor chat room postings and instant messenger conversations, and report any evidence of illegal activity they see to the FBI. They deliberately choose not to bother doing this. THis is lazy. Yes, it's the parents fault for not being as watchful as they should be, but that's understandable, not condonable but sadly typical and, maybe, forgivable. But Yahoo in the meantime is not stepping up, is not doing anything--let me repeat that--IS NOT DOING ANYTHING to SUBSTANTIVE AT ALL to stop the pedophelia that goes on in their own chat service. No, in fact, they're actually helping pedophiles. First by creating an environment where this occurs, and then making it progressively easier and easier for hte pedophiles to prey an and abuse children