Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Prudish

I received this email from Blogger this morning:

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

(c) 2015 Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA


For me to go thru the blog and delete every pic which Google might find offensive would take forever. So now I am considering whether just to delete the blog and my other blogs and to withdraw from being online.  Over the last few years, I have considered withdrawing (for all sorts of reasons.)  This move by the prudes is the last straw.

2 comments:

Alex said...

Thanks for letting us know about this threat. I'd hope that access to your text would still be possible - as usual in such cases the implied threat is unclear and the possible proposed way round (the archiving) is vague...

Hunter said...

Well, I hope you won't desert the Internet. Strangely enough, I haven't gotten a similar e-mail, but my nudes tend to be "artistic." I can't help but wonder if some idiot has complained. Alex is right -- this is the sort of vague "policy" that allows Google to do whatever they damned well please.

We use Wordpress on Sleeping Hedgehog and Green Man Review. I don't find it as user-friendly as Blogger, and it has some limitations that really annoy me. (For example, block quotes won't wrap around images, which has forced me to revise our style.) You might check out Typepad -- several blogs that I visit use that.

At any rate, don't leave us!