Blogger sites containing nudity will be made private soon

Google has warned Blogger customers today that if their pages contain adult content, they should quickly take action themselves or Google will do so itself. According to Google, the Blogger platform is host to many pages containing porn and other adult content which is visible in search engine results if filters are not set. As a consequence of this, Google will start making these pages private starting March 23. If Blogger users know that this warning is targeted at their content, they have two options before Google takes action.

The first option would be for them to make their Blogger pages private themselves, and keep the adult content without any further problems from the search engine giant. That’s not really an alternative, as Google will do that for them in case their blogs are still public on March 23. The other option would be for those having bits of adult content on their pages to remove it, and thus escape Google’s judgement in the future. If you are planning to get onto Blogger, you should know that if you start your page in March and post adult content, your blog will not be subject to the same rules.

As such, blogs on the platform created next month will be automatically taken down if they contain adult material, so you might want to find another platform if you’re set on porn or other things. These new rules and guidelines were published by Google in their terms and conditions policy today. The terms for Blogger don’t mean that you will be completely prohibited from using nudity in your blog, it just means the photos, videos or other media containing such imagery will have to have artistic, education, documentary significance, so you’ll get away with it. For example, if you’re one who writes romantic poetry, nudity as an illustration of the metaphors in your poems is alright with Google and Blogger, which is nice. It might also prove to be cumbersome for the platform to differentiate between nudity as art and nudity as plain nudity for the sake of porn, but we’re going to have to wait and see what criteria Blogger and Google will use to sort out the weeds.

Do you think the new Blogger policy is an example of unnecessary censorship? Do you think that by enacting this policy, Blogger and Google will manage to change the way we look at adult content? Our guess is that it won’t and there will be backlash from users condemning Google for trying to censor the internet. It’s a rather sensitive subject and many people have already voiced their opinions, saying that it’s not fair for Google to regulate what bloggers post in such a manner. They are right, because pornography is legal on the internet, so why wouldn’t it be just as legal on Blogger? If you don’t put disclaimers on your blog and don’t state that it contains adult content, it’s not cool, but if you take all the necessary precautions so that children don’t stumble upon something they shouldn’t see, I don’t see why it would be a problem.

Update: Google has changed its mind, after feedback started piling up, asking the Blogger platform to not change their policies in such a manner. The company will still enforce stricter rules on the platform. Here’s the forum post the Blogger Team made, describing their turnaround: “This week, we announced a change to Blogger’s porn policy. We’ve had a ton of feedback, in particular about the introduction of a retroactive change (some people have had accounts for 10+ years), but also about the negative impact on individuals who post sexually explicit content to express their identities. So rather than implement this change, we’ve decided to step up enforcement around our existing policy prohibiting commercial porn. Blow owners should continue to mark any blogs containing sexually explicit content as “adult” so that they can be placed behind an “adult content” warning page.”