4chan, eBaum Flood YouTube with Adult Content

oops operation porn day 2009 The folks over at YouTube have their work cut out for them over the next couple of days.

Yesterday, May 20, was dubbed “Porn Day” by members of the popular 4chan and eBaum’s World sites. Groups of users from both sites began uploading explicit video clips to YouTube by the bucket-load, hoping to dominate the search rankings.

The tactics being used are fairly sneaky, in that the content is not marked “adult” and most of the vids contain 20 to 30 seconds of non-adult content before the offending surprise package is discovered.

YouTube has been quick to delete the clips for violations of the site’s TOS, but you can still find some clips if you look hard enough (not that we’re trying, mind you). Clips that are removed, however, still leave some remnants of offending material as the thumbnails are still lingering out there.

“It may take some time for video search results and thumbnail images to disappear from the site,” Google spokesperson Scott Rubin told Ars. “Typically, this should not take more than a couple of days, but the videos themselves are no longer viewable.”