The other possibility is that Google acted on another complaint. My hypothesis on the situation is that Google doesn’t verify CSAM complaints, so it would be very prone to abuse as there is no counter-form in this case,” he explains. “From what I’m seeing, the front page is gone in every region. However, blocking in Russia is carried out by local ISPs, not Google, and Rule34’s operator says that as far as he can see, the site has been removed from Google everywhere, not just Russia. I guess they didn’t like the meme,” he explains. But they still blocked the site in Russia. We then replaced the only thing on there, our logo. “We repeatedly asked them what on our front page was but they couldn’t clarify. The entity, which administers Russia’s site-blocking regime (which covers everything from piracy to terrorism), wrote to Rule34 claiming that there was CSAM on the site’s homepage and, if it wasn’t removed, the site would be blocked in Russia. So the big question remains: who is behind it? No Clear Culprit But There Are OptionsĮarly on in our discussions the operator of Rule34 mentioned contact with Russian telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor which issued a complaint to the site a couple of months ago. While Rule34 is clearly an adult site (The Internet’s informal ‘ Rule 34‘ asserts that pornography exists for every conceivable topic), its operator is adamant that his platform has done nothing wrong and would not allow such material, certainly not on the front page.Īs things stand, Rule34’s operator believes that rather than using bogus DMCA notices to have sites like his delisted, people could be turning to CSAM complaints instead since, as far as he’s aware, there is no way to effectively counter them. Google Reveals That Content Was Indeed Removedīy using the query ‘site:rule34.xxx rule34’ and scrolling to the bottom of the search results, Rule34’s operator found a notice from Google: ‘Suspected child abuse content has been removed from this page’ That was until Rule34 began digging and found something pretty unsettling. “If your site wasn’t removed due to a legal complaint and you don’t believe it violates our Webmaster Guidelines, but it isn’t appearing in Google search results or isn’t performing as well as before, you can request reconsideration of your site.”Īs the image above shows, the impact of the delisting was clear but the reasons were less so. If you believe this is in error, please check the URLs in question again,” Google responded. “We have no record of the following URLs having been removed from Google’s search index due to a legal complaint under the DMCA. However, after checking with Google the company confirmed that copyright wasn’t the problem. The immediate concern was that someone had sent a DMCA notice complaining about the page which, incidentally, carries no infringing content. In discussions with TorrentFreak this week, the operator of Rule34 explained that sometime around July 13, 2021, Google stopped sending all traffic to the site’s homepage at Rule34.xxx.

While unaffected by that wave, the operator of adult site Rule34 – a site with around 100 million monthly visitors – now believes he is being targeted in a similar but entirely more serious way. The theory was that these bogus notices were sent by rivals or competitors to these platforms in an effort to damage their presence on the web. Many of those platforms were so-called ‘hentai’ sites which focus on adult-orientated comics and cartoons.

Two years ago we reported on a wave of bogus DMCA notices that targeted various adult sites.

Rule 34 websites