Google Cleaning Up Blogger By Banning Porn
Back in July 2013, Yahoo-owned Tumblr tried to make its pages of porn inaccessible to the general public by making searches for this material nearly impossible. The 12.5 million "Adult"-based blogs could only be found if visitors landed on a blog that already linked to the "not safe for work" content. Performing a search for porn within and outside Tumblr produced no results.
However, owners of the blogs in question lashed out in protest, pushing Tumblr into restoring the pages' listings in the search engine. Previously, these sites could be found using "Adult" and "NSFW" tags, but now all porn-based sites are crammed under the "NSFW" search tag umbrella. Tumblr users in Safe Mode will not see the sexually explicit content.
On Monday night, Google updated its own adult content policy for Blogger, revealing that as of March 23, 2015, porn will be banned from the site. More specifically, the terms state that "you won't be able to publicly share images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity." The only nudity that Google will allow must fall within the scientific, documentary, artistic and educational categories.
"If your existing blog does have sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video, your blog will be made private after March 23, 2015," Google stated. "No content will be deleted, but private content can only be seen by the owner or admins of the blog and the people who the owner has shared the blog with."
Bloggers who have created their porn-based pages before March 23, 2015 have two choices: they must either remove all explicit nude pictures and videos, or they must mark their blog as private. Bloggers can also simply close down their blog, which can be done by exporting the site as an .xml file or by using Google Takeout to archive everything.
For blogs that are created after March 23, 2015 and show sexually explicit material, Google will take down these sites and/or will "take other action."
Google began to crack down on owners of porn-based blogs back in 2013 by changing its Content Policy. In a nutshell, the company doesn't want bloggers to make money off their adult-oriented blogs. Those with questionable advertisements will be shut down if the offending adverts are not removed.
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Is Google going too far in banning blogs with explicit adult content? Some may say that the banning is a violation of free speech. Take a look at Google's Content Policy and you'll see that the company supports "communication, self-expression and freedom of speech." However, Google has the right to choose what can and cannot be shown on Blogger. Don't like the new terms? Then pack your bags and move the site over to Tumblr.
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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ethanolson Nice! I'm with Google. I think if people want porn it should be paid for and taxed heavily. Wouldn't it be great if the internet had a porn mode that opened that stuff up for an extra $30 a month or so? I'm all for this stuff. I've seen this stuff trash people's lives.Reply -
qlum Porn is an integral part of the internet and I feel like there is really no good reason to push it to the edges of obscurity. Sure there are quite a few bad cases in the production of porn but overall I feel like trying to hide it only makes that worse.Reply
I hate it when morals are forced upon everyone because some people think like that or who fear people who are scared of porn when they are not fapping themselves. -
Grognak That's extremely hypocritical considering Google is the #1 tool when it comes to finding porn and Google Images is just, like, full of the stuff. There's a warning when entering NSFW blogs anyway, so I don't see the problem.Reply -
backoffmanImascientist "Nice! I'm with Google. I think if people want porn it should be paid for and taxed heavily. Wouldn't it be great if the internet had a porn mode that opened that stuff up for an extra $30 a month or so? I'm all for this stuff. I've seen this stuff trash people's lives."Reply
Sure. Let's not have pointed scissors either, because some so called adults aren't smart enough to not run with them.. -
everlast66 @ethanolsonReply
"Nice! I'm with Google. I think if people want porn it should be paid for and taxed heavily. Wouldn't it be great if the internet had a porn mode that opened that stuff up for an extra $30 a month or so? I'm all for this stuff. I've seen this stuff trash people's lives."
You are getting late for your flight to North Korea.
Let people decide for themselves if porn is good or not. -
alidan ReplyThat's extremely hypocritical considering Google is the #1 tool when it comes to finding porn and Google Images is just, like, full of the stuff. There's a warning when entering NSFW blogs anyway, so I don't see the problem.
bing is easily the best when it comes to unfiltered internet searches anymore.
i only use google when i want to find something that is safe for work, google nurtured its porn finding capabilities a long time ago and has never been the same sense. hell, there are some terms (just searched, apparently its fixed but for me the damage is already done) that only had a pornographic definition but you couldn't get one image in the search.
im a god damn adult and if i want to search for something i don't want to be treated like a 3 year old. google use to have a "yes, you are an adult" setting but they got rid of that. -
synphul It seems like banning it is a bit oppressive. I've always viewed the internet as a place that's full of free thought, speech, expression etc no matter what it is. Also as an adult medium, not a padded child safe playground as a place for non attentive parents to drop their kids off. If people don't wish to see porn or cnn or anything religious they don't have to. They can exclude it, block it etc. It becomes uncomfortable when those in positions of control/power start making the decisions for us.Reply
Google is so worried about blogger having porn yet just last summer I was working on a furniture project involving wood joinery. Using google's trusty advanced reverse image search using a photo of wood joints it turned up plenty of results - 95% of which were bare breasts. Nice job google. Maybe they should check their own issues before being concerned with others. -
Tim Gueguen I found out about this from a rant someone posted to their Deviantart account. It will be interesting to see how many people they piss off by pulling blogs that accidentally get labelled as violating the new TOS. Conversely you can be sure that some blogs that are in violation won't get pulled.Reply