The Bright Side of Blogger's New Ban on Porn

by Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com Porn For Women

On the evening of Monday, February 23, a select group of users of Google’s Blogger platform received an email with the anodyne subject line “Blogger Content Policy Update.” For the Blogger users in question, it might as well have read “GTFO, Pervert.”

“We’re writing to tell you about an upcoming change to the Blogger Content Policy that may affect your account” the email begins. “In the coming weeks, we’ll no longer allow blogs that contain sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video.”

(Side Note: Had I been the one to write this email, there’s no way I could have resisted rendering the beginning of the above sentence as “In the cumming weeks….”)

Read on…

Don’t worry though: Google isn’t banning all things arguable erotic or merely nude.

“We’ll still allow nudity presented in artistic, educational, documentary or scientific contexts, or where there are other substantial benefits to the public from not taking action on the content,” the email explains.

While I do take issue with the underlying assumption there’s nothing beneficial to the public about freely accessible sexually-explicit blogs filled with highly educational posts about lipstick lesbian photography, hopefully this policy change will result in a fascinating new career opportunity for art critics.

A lot of people are decrying the policy change as prudery, Google imposing its own tastes on web surfers, or even censorship. Personally, though, I see all sorts of silver linings in this particular cloud.

In addition to offering the aforementioned hope of employment to people who misspent their college years in pursuit of BFA degrees, this policy change will result in a staggering drop in the amount of free porn available on the Internet – or a staggering drop in the amount of the free porn available on the Internet available via obscure little porn blogs which nobody goes to anyway, at least.

By removing all those no-value-to-the-public porn blogs from the mix, Blogger also ensures more attention will be paid to blogs of serious social benefit, like My Year of Star Trek or Conspiracy Queries with Alan Park. And how could we have a serious discussion about the Truth behind the real story of what happened on 9/11 if there’s a bunch of low-value porn blogs hanging around the joint?

Third, let’s get a grip here: It’s not like Blogger is banning a form of expression which anybody can appreciate, like gratuitous violence. All they’re doing is eliminating certain more graphic forms of expression concerning sex – something hardly anyone likes or harbors any curiosity about these days.

Most importantly, of course, this ban shows Google is concerned about the possibility of one of its platforms being used to distribute material which could be harmful and/or offensive to viewers.

Heck, all you have to do to understand how staunchly opposed Google is to people using their platforms to seek, find and consume free online porn is to Google the phrase “porn videos!”

Now, I’m not going to actually click through to any of the sites which come back in response to this search, because I have total confidence that an upstanding brand like Google would never irresponsibly link to sites which freely distribute hardcore porn.

I’m sure these names I’m seeing in the search responses – XVideos, Pornhub, Slutload – are simply fanciful terms of art which a person more expert than myself could use to tell at a glance just how artistic, educational, and/or scientific is the content of those sites.

So, to sum up: Blogger just got a lot more relevant, proportionately speaking, for people interested in pictures of food, rock-solid information on conspiracies undertaken by the U.S. government and the latest hot gossip out of Sri Lanka – and a whole lot less compelling for that tiny, fundamentally-misaligned portion of the human population which is still interested in porn.

In other words, it’s a great day to be a Netizen. We have been reminded once again that our betters from the company which has gradually rendered “Don’t Be Evil” into an even more meaningless motto than it began have our backs.

Yes, thanks to this wise and oh-so-necessary new policy, we will no longer need to go through the exhaustive effort of using our brain to avoid that miniscule fraction of the web’s pornography once available through their Blogger – even if we’re using their search platform to find online porn at the time!

Now that’s what I call progress.

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UPDATE:  AVN.com reports:

Google Reverses Blogger Porn Ban Following ‘Ton of Feedback’. But the search giant says it will “step up” enforcement of banned commercial porn on Blogger.
LOS ANGELES—Late last night, Google issued an update on its recent decision to ban sexually explicit content on its Blogger network. The update essentially reverses the most egregious changes to a policy that would, as one consequence, have forced longtime users of the platform to either scrape their blogs of content or become essentially invisible to all but invited guests. But Google is not backing down all the way. Instead, in conceding defeat on its desired plan, it resolves to double-down on what it calls “our existing policy prohibiting commercial porn.”

The complete statement reads:

Hello everyone,

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. 

Blog 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.

Bloggers whose content is consistent with this and other policies do not need to make any changes to their blogs.

Thank you for your continued feedback. 

The Blogger Team