Google Changes Content Policy To Prohibit Adult Material On Blogger Platform Starting March 23

Starting next month all users of Google’s Blogger platform must adhere to a more stringent content policy, which includes banning users from sharing sexually explicit or graphic nudity on their sites.

Google announced the changes Tuesday and gave users until March 23 to remove the sexually suggestive images or their blogs will be pulled from public searches. The policy change affects millions of blogs with “blogger” or “blogspot” in their URLs.

“If your existing blog does have sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video, your blog will be made private after March 23, 2015,” the company says in a news release. “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.”

Current blog users can who post nudity have a few options before the new policy kicks in. They can either remove the images or video from their site or they can mark their blog as private.

If users wish to take down their blog altogether, Google suggest they export it as a .xml file or archive the text and images via Google Takeout.

Blogs created after March 23 may be removed if they include content that is sexually explicit or graphic nudity, a statement from the company says.

However, under the new policy Google will continue to allow some nudity, as long as it “offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts.”

Before today’s policy change announcement, Google enabled users to post adult content as long as the blog was labeled. The company would then an “adult content” pop-up warning for viewers.

Despite the changes, Google’s content policy still states that it believes that censoring “content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression.”

Current Blogger users who post nudity tell Forbes that the policy changes will decimate their viewership.

“We cannot possibly invite hundreds of thousands of people one by one,” one adult blogger says. “With no public access, our sites will wither from inattention and lack of new insight and comment.”

Google Bans Adult Material On Blogger [Forbes]

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