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.
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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