Demolition

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,

 We're writing to tell you about an upcoming change to the Blogger Content

 Policy that may affect your account.

 

 In the coming weeks, we'll no longer allow blogs that contain sexually

 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.