Google Reverses Content Policy Prohibiting Adult Content On Blogger Platform

In an abrupt about-face, Google announced early Friday morning that it would reverse a content policy change made just three days earlier that banned the users of the Blogger platform from sharing sexually explicit or graphic nudity on their sites.

The Verge reports that Google’s Blogger Team posted an update to the company’s product forums backtracking on the earlier decision to enforce a more stringent content policy.

According to the forum post, Google made the decision to reverse the policy – which gave users until March 23 to remove sexually suggestive images or have their blogs will be pulled from public searches – after receiving a great deal of feedback from users.

“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,” the company said in the post. “So rather than implement this change, we’ve decided to step up enforcement around our existing policy prohibiting commercial porn.”

Despite the policy one-eighty, the Blogger Team requested that users continue to mark any blogs containing sexually explicit content as “adult” so that an “adult content” pop-up warning can be put in place.

The policy announced this week limited nudity on Blogger sites to that which offered a “substantial public benefit, for example artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts.”

Google reverses decision to ban adult content on Blogger [The Verge]

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