Loathe as I
am to do so it looks like I may have to cave in to internet censorship and
remove a significant amount of content from the gavcrimson blog. Received this
email notice from blogger the other day, as it seems did everyone else who runs
an ‘adult’ blog.
“Dear
Blogger User,
Policy that may affect your account.
explicit or graphic nude images or video.
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 new
policy will take effect on 23 March 2015. After this policy comes
into force, Google will restrict access to any
blog identified as being in
violation of our revised policy. No content
will be deleted, but only blog
authors and those with whom they have
expressly shared the blog will be
able to see the content that we've made
private.
Our records
indicate that your account may be affected by this policy
change. Please refrain from creating new
content that would violate this
policy. We would also ask you to make any
necessary changes to your
existing blog to comply as soon as possible so
that you won't experience
any interruptions in service. You may also
choose to create an archive of
your content via Google Takeout
(https://www.google.com/settings/takeout/custom/blogger).
For more
information, please look here
(https://support.google.com/blogger?p=policy_update).
Yours
sincerely,
The Blogger Team”
This is a
pain, albeit not a big surprise, the writing has been on the wall for a while
what with google blogs that either have been flagged for adult content by their
owners or their readers having been stigmatised by google and left out of their
search engine results, and now this. Looking at my opinions it seems like I’d
be best to edit the blog down to a ‘safe for work’ version and remove its
‘content warning’, that way hopefully it will avoid the cull at the end of
March. Though if it does go down I might then look into starting up a new blog
elsewhere. I feel allot more sorry for my friend Russ whose ‘kameraclub’ blog
has similarly been marked for death, and clearly won’t even be salvageable
under the new blogger rules, meaning all the work he has done on that blog will
have been in vain come the end of march. Unlike my blog his is a comparatively
new venture, with clearly allot more material that he has yet to share with
people and which he no longer can do on blogger. There are some more of his own
thoughts on what he can do next here: http://www.thekameraclub.co.uk/.../site-hosting-update.html
By sheer
coincidence I had been considering taking my blog away from being so
sexploitation heavy and diversifying its subject matter, but I do object to
having my hand forced in this matter by censorship, and it is yet another
worrying blow for freedom on the internet.
