Virulent opposition from blogging community.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BENGALURU: Just two days after Google announced a ban on sexually explicit content in Blogger, they backtracked from it, indicating virulent opposition from its blogging community.
Google, on February 24, announced that they plan to make sexually provocative blogs into private blogs that can be accessed only by the administrator and people with whom it has been already shared. After Google’s announcement blogs containing “sexually explicit images or graphic nude images or videos” feared a black out from the general search result.
Google had promised that none of these contents will be deleted without the knowledge of the administrator and they also assured that content that benefit the public such as artistic, educational, documentary or scientific will not be affected by the new update.
Jessica Pelegio, a support manager at Google wrote on the official forum that “We’ve (Google) 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.”
She also added that “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.”
Google’s Blogger has fewer restrictions than other blogging platforms such as WordPress when it comes to users uploading sexually explicit content. But, since 2012, the company has added a new clause to its policy that restricts users from uploading adult content intended for generating revenue and also disavowed users from uploading “illegal sexual content, including image, video or textual content that depicts or encourages rape, incest, bestiality, or necrophilia.”
When it comes to uploading private photos and videos, Google insist its users to get prior permission from the people included in the content. This clause has been there since 2014 and has been replicated by social news website Reddit earlier this week. CEO of Reddit Ellen Pao said “effective 10 March, Reddit will prohibit any photograph, video or digital image of a person who is nude or engaged in a sexual act if the subject has not given permission for it to be used”.
Google’s move to bring a ban on sexually explicit content in blogs was praised by organizations such as National Center on Sexual Exploitation.