Remember that guy who started the first successful social network, only to see it fall by the wayside, weighed down by flashing gifs and pornbots? MySpace founder Tom Anderson is back in the news, doling out advice to Google+ on how not to become a cesspool like his site did.

Anderson throws his two cents in on a battle waged between TechCrunch blogger MG Siegler (via The Guardian), who was angry after his Google+ profile picture was censored and removed for showing him giving the finger.

Siegler writes in his post: “My problem isn’t so much with the fact that I couldn’t have a profile picture of myself giving everyone the finger – which I can and do on Twitter and elsewhere – it’s that no one bothered to tell me or warn me before they just went into my account and deleted the picture. What if this was the only place I had stored the picture?

But Anderson thinks it’s okay for Google+ to keep content clean on its networking site, as it’s that kind of “offensive material” that sent MySpace down the drain. He weighed in on his own Google+ page, writing:

All Google+ has done here is execute on its stated plan: removing offensive photos. This is Facebook’s plan, Twitter’s plan and Myspace’s before it. When you’re processing hundreds of thousands of photos a day (and in Facebook’s case, millions a day), it’s not easy to spot such material (even with algorithms). It’s not that Google+ has decided to do things differently, it’s just that they’re ahead of the game and doing things better….

In any case, I would respectfully submit that we, the users of Google+ (and Facebook or Twitter) don’t need to see you flipping us off, nor do we need to see you naked, or displaying something else generally considered offensive. When a social network [lets] that stuff slide, it turns into a cesspool that no one wants to visit… sorta like Myspace was.

Brutal honesty from the man who was everyone’s first MySpace friend.

MySpace Tom to Google+: don’t become a cesspool like my site [The Guardian]

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.