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Tag: adult content

  • Google Isn’t Banning Porn on Blogger After All

    If you post your own sexually explicit content on Blogger, Google’s gonna let you do you. Just don’t use blogger as a hub for commercial porn.

    Google has reversed a decision it made earlier this week to ban adult content on its Blogger network.

    “This week, we announced a change to Blogger’s porn policy. 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,” says Jessica Pelegio, Social Product Support Manager at Google.

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

    In 2013, Google cracked down on blogs that monetized from adult ads, but allowed bloggers to continue to post adult content as long as it was marked as such. But earlier this week, Google announced that it would ban “images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity” effective March 23. It would do this by making all that content private on old accounts, and disabling new accounts that posted adult content.

    Apparently, after thinking this through (and likely receiving some unhappy feedback), Google has decided it best to let people express themselves on Blogger.

    You do, however, still need to mark your blogs as “adult” if necessary.

    Google product forums via The Verge

  • Google Bans Porn on Blogger, Effective March 23

    If you like to post sexually explicit content on your Blogger blog, you might want to think about making the switch to Tumblr.

    Google has announced that it is banning “images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity” on its Blogger platform, effective March 23. According to Google, if you operate a blog with sexually explicit content, your blog will be made private on March 23. Google’s not going to remove your content, but your blog will only be viewable to you, other admins, or users you share it with specifically.

    If you want to keep your blog from going private in a few weeks, Google says you need to start cleaning it up. Any blogs created after the March 23 cutoff will be up for removal if they contain adult content.

    There is one exception to this – and it has to do with the context of the nudity.

    “We’ll still allow nudity if the content offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts,” says Google.

    Of course, this will no doubt lead to some bickering between Google and its bloggers, as the line between pornographic and artistic is rather undefined at times.

    In 2013, Google cracked down on blogs that monetized from adult ads, but allowed bloggers to continue to post adult content as long as it was marked as such.

    This decision could drive bloggers elsewhere – most likely Tumblr. If you’re not familiar with Tumblr, it’s a porn free-for-all. As long as your Tumblr blog is properly marked as NSFW, then you can “go nuts, show nuts, whatever” (those are Tumblr’s actual words).

    At one point a couple years back, Tumblr was accused a removing adult content from blogs – but it turned out the site wasn’t really removing content, just changing search settings and making it a little harder to find.

  • Larry Flynt: Upgrade Your Magazine Hiding Techniques

    In the very near future, you won’t need to hide your Hustler magazines from Mommy Dearest or Dearest Wife; Larry Flynt, the number one most “Powerful Person in Porn” according to some, tells us in a CBS Sunday Morning Interview that Hustler magazine is on its way to the internet.

    Flynt fought battles to keep Hustler alive in its early days (how many adult content mavericks can say that someone has tried to assassinate them?), and he doesn’t plan to abandon it, despite the fact that the magazine has dropped to below 100,000 issue purchases a month now.

    With the virtually unlimited amount of adult content readily available for anyone with a click of a button these days, Flynt is rolling with the times and is only selling the magazine online starting next month. To be fair, most magazines are struggling with physical copy purchases– and most already have online versions of their magazine.

    If there is any word to describe Larry Flynt, controversial has to be it. He is not as widely loved as his colleague Hugh Hefner, and the reasons might possibly be warranted. With the first issues of Hustler in 1974, the world had access to women portrayed in a bit less of a tasteful manner than Playboy. Possibly in attempts to separate himself from the 20-year-old magazine that had a monopoly on adult content, Flynt introduced the world to the first instances of a woman with an open vagina in a magazine. His decision to print nude pictures of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis purchased from the paparazzi certainly didn’t increase his popularity either.

    Either way, Flynt continues to glide about in his gold-plated wheelchair taking advantage of his God-given American rights, and people will either love or hate it. The jury is out to determine if a large number of people worldwide suddenly become computer whizzes as they make sure to leave no virtual tracks of visiting the upcoming virtual Hustler magazine.

    Image via WikiCommons

  • Facebook to Pull All Ads from Pages with ‘Violent, Graphic, or Sexual Content’

    Starting next Monday, if you operate a page or group that contains any violent, graphic, or sexual content, you’re going on Facebook’s blacklist for ads.

    In an effort to assure advertisers that their ads will no longer appear next to any unsavory content, Facebook is going to vastly expand the list of ad-restricted pages and groups.

    “For example, we will now seek to restrict ads from appearing next to Pages and Groups that contain any violent, graphic or sexual content (content that does not violate our community standards). Prior to this change, a Page selling adult products was eligible to have ads appear on its right-hand side; now there will not be ads displayed next to this type of content,” says the company.

    It’s not really clear how many pages and groups this will affect – Facebook has a pretty strict policy on sexual content. But there’s obviously enough pages that fall into this Facebook grey zone to warrant such a move.

    Facebook says that they are already vigilant in protecting marketers from possible bad PR situations, but that this will help them be even more effective.

    “We know that marketers work hard to promote their brands, and we take their objectives seriously. While we already have rigorous review and removal policies for content against our terms, we recognize we need to do more to prevent situations where ads are displayed alongside controversial Pages and Groups. So we are taking action.”

    The review and removal process will start slow – real life humans will make the decisions. But in the near future, Facebook says that they will develop an automated system to make sure ads no longer appear next to this questionable content.

    This move is likely a response to the choice by some advertisers to yank their campaigns from Facebook after some of their ads appeared next to misogynistic content.

    Just earlier this week, Google announced that they too would be restricting ads that service adult content blogs on their Blogger platform.

  • Google Warns ‘Adult’ Bloggers with Porn Ads of Imminent Takedown [UPDATED]

    It looks like Google is getting ready to crack down on adult content on Blogger – or at least those who profit from promoting adult content on Blogger.

    Blogger users who have identified their blogs as containing “adult” content just received an email warning them that Google is about to start removing blogs that “are adult in nature and are displaying advertisements to adult websites.” Google says that this action will come behind an update to their content policy on June 30th.

    But really, Blogger’s content policy has always banned most ads and links to adult websites.

    “Do not use Blogger as a way to make money on adult content. For example, don’t create blogs where a significant percentage of the content is ads or links to commercial porn sites,” says the Blogger policy.

    I guess Google is simply going to make this clause a bit more strict, taking out that “significant percentage” part and replacing it with an outright ban on ads and links to outside porn.

    As far as for “adult” content in general, it has always been ok, just as long as blog admins properly label their content – and don’t promote any sort of child pornography, incest, or bestiality.

    But this email that Google sent to Blogger admins is a bit ambiguous. Check it out:

    Is Google saying that they are planning to remove all blogs that both contain adult content and ads to adult content? Or, are they saying that they plan on removing blogs that contain adult content as well as remove blogs that contain ads to adult content? These two things are quite different.

    Plus, let’s be real – the term “adult.” without any other descriptions, is vague – at best. Exactly what kind of crackdown is Google planning here?

    I’ve reached out to Google for clarification and will update this article accordingly.

    UPDATE: According to a Google spokesperson, it looks like they’re just going to be removing blogs that monetize from adult ads:

    “We will be updating our Content Policy to strictly prohibit the monetization of adult content on Blogger. We will remove blogs that are displaying advertisements to adult websites.”

    [Violet Blue via The Next Web]