Yahoo! has announced that it is shutting down all customer created chat rooms after some sponsors pulled their advertising from the chat rooms. The reason: they were told that some of the chat rooms were used to promote pedophilia and sexual performances by minors.
The companies that pulled their ads from Yahoo! included State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, Georgia-Pacific and Pepsi. Texas television station KPRC notified the advertisers that topics such as pedophilia were discussed in some of the chat rooms in which their ads were shown.
Mary Osako, a spokeswoman for Yahoo! Inc., said that all customer created chat rooms had been discontinued and that any attempts to create new customer created chat rooms have been blocked. Osako refused to specify whether or not the decision to stop hosting the chat rooms was related to the actions of the advertisers.
'We were thoroughly appalled when we were told that our ads were appearing on those sites,' State Farm spokesman Phil Supple said. 'We took immediate action to see that they were withdrawn.'
Chat rooms allow small groups of Internet users with similar interests to exchange brief messages with each other.
Those chat rooms created by Yahoo! will continue to operate normally.
