Ten years ago, Google ban porn on Blogger, then quickly reversed themselves after user pushback.
On February 23, 2015 Google announced that Blogger blogs would no longer be able to "publicly share images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity"
This was a big change, because Blogger had allowed sexual content and nudity since it launched in 1999. And was one of the few platforms that did. In 2013 Blogger had banned ads for adult websites, and monetizing adult content, but not the adult content itself.
The change would go into effect on March 23, and at that point any existing blogs with explicit content would be made private. That meant that no content would be deleted, but only the blog owners, admins, and specific people the blog was shared with would be able to see the blog's posts.
And new blogs could be removed for posting sexually explicit images and videos.
An exception would be made for artistic, scientific, educational or documentary content. This was, of course, in line with most blogging and social platforms. And that was part of users' concern, that platforms frequently did remove content that seemed like it should fall under one of those exceptions.
A Platform for Free Expression?
Blogger had always touted itself as a platform for free expression.
The Content Policy said:
Blogger is a free service for communication, self-expression and freedom of speech. We believe Blogger increases the availability of information, encourages healthy debate, and makes possible new connections between people. It is our belief that censoring this content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression.But the Policy also noted that this was not pure freedom.
However, in order to uphold these values, we need to curb abuses that threaten our ability to provide this service and the freedom of expression it encourages. As a result, there are some boundaries on the type of content that can be hosted with Blogger. The boundaries we've defined are those that both comply with legal requirements and that serve to enhance the service as a whole.
It seems Google had decided that the sexual content had become a liability.
A Google spokesperson explained:
“We’ve updated our policy to fall in line with our policies across Google’s hosted products (including products like YouTube or Google+)."
That probably seemed reasonable, but it didn't take into consideration the users with adult content blogs.
Google Quickly Backtracked
The outcry was immediate, especially from Blogger users who had been posting sexual content for years.
Sex writer Violet Blue wrote that this would affect her own Blogger blog, and noted
When Google forces its "unacceptable" Blogger blogs to go dark, it will break more of the Internet than you think. Countless links that have been accessible on Blogger since its inception in 1999 will be broken across the Internet.
It wasn't just porn uploaders who were upset, but also naturists and folks who used nudity to make political statements. And there were concerns that the limits were too vague, with some erotic romance book reviewers concerned, for example.
There was some criticism of "Top Contributors", volunteers like me in the Blogger help community, for not being consistent about what would and wouldn't be allowed.
But a lot of that is because the policy was, in fact, vague, and on every platform there are huge gray areas around what constitutes acceptable artistic nudity and what makes content educational.
“What constitutes ‘artistic or educational’ for pictures and who makes that decision?” asked Cande, who blogs at Secret Diary of An Online Stripper. “How are we to know what Blogger/Google might consider artistic? Something that is explicit for one person might well be educational for another and what is considered ‘artistic’ is also purely subjective. I don’t think cutting cows in half is art, but it’s prized as art in galleries who exhibit Damien Hirst.” (A.V. Flox on Google+)“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.”
Google would be more aggressive in enforcing existing policy and making sure that people followed the requirement that the adult content setting be turned on, which adds a warning interstitial.
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