Google Will Censor Images On Blogger

Since Kim Kardashian ended up not breaking the Internet by showing off her glorious buns, Google thought they should step up and try their hand at breaking it. Perhaps “breaking the internet” is the wrong term, but they really don’t want to see porn on Blogger.  

On March 23rd Google will update their policy towards adult content. It reads as follows:    

Starting March 23, 2015, you won't be able to publicly share images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity on Blogger.

Note: We’ll still allow nudity if the content offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts.

Changes you’ll see to your existing blogs

If your existing blog doesn’t have any sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video on it, you won’t notice any changes.

If your existing blog does have sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video, your blog will be made private after March 23, 2015. No content will be deleted, but private content can only be seen by the owner or admins of the blog and the people who the owner has shared the blog with.

Settings you can update for existing blogs

If your blog was created before March 23, 2015, and contains content that violates our new policy, you have a few options for changing your blog before the new policy starts:

* Remove sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video from your blog

* Mark your blog as private

If you’d rather take your blog down altogether, you can export your blog as a .xml file or archive your blog's text and images using Google Takeout.

Effect on new blogs

For any blogs created after March 23, 2015, we may remove the blog or take other action if it includes content that is sexually explicit or shows graphic nudity as explained in our content policy.

Well, I guess it’s good know to that you can still show nudity for educational purposes because you know schools use nudity all the time. I mean, we live in the country that isn’t afraid of the naked body or sex or anything relating to sex. Anyone else find this a little ironic? I mean isn’t 50 Shades of Grey the number movie in the county?

Google isn’t alone in trying to prevent porn blogs from showing up in searches. Tumblr attempted to do something similar back in 2013, but the backlash from bloggers and readers of blogs prompted parent company Yahoo to come up with a less restrictive plan. While everyone loves Google, maybe they should remember they aren’t the only game in town. Sure, it’s great to be the king, but you’re always looking over your shoulder.  

Really what this comes down to is free speech. I get it, some people don’t like porn and that’s okay. I don’t like asparagus, but I don’t try and ban it from supermarkets all over the world. In fact, I will make asparagus for people who like it and I simply won’t eat it. That’s how it works. So, come on Google, don’t be that guy. Don’t try to tell us what we can and can’t post, what we can and can’t look at, or what is or isn’t sexually explicit or graphic.  

Of course this could all be a giant conspiracy by the print media to get us to buy porno magazines again. But I don’t believe in conspiracies.

UPDATE 2/27/15 Google has changed its mind about banning all porn from Blogger, detailed in a message posted to Google's support pages:

"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."

Via AVN