Google's Blogger blogging service previously allowed X-rated content on their sites so long as they were marked appropriately. But starting on March 23rd. 2015, Blogger will forcefully privatize all blogs with sexually explicit content or nude photo's in a mass 30-day eviction notice to everyone who uses them services to post pornographic pictures. According to Google you have two options: 1. Make your blog private so that the only person who can see the content are blog owners, or 2. Remove all sexually explicit content from your blog before the specified date.
For a blogging site that dedicated itself to the premise of freedom of expression, it sure doesn't want you to express your freedom. As of yet it is unclear why Google had the sudden change of heart in its puritanical efforts to cleanse the blogging network any wayward spooge. Although Blogger will still be allowing nudity for anything that benefits the public, such as education, art, scientific, or documentary in context.
It seems like a very sex-negative thing to do to forcefully exclude pornographic images on Blogger all of a sudden. It is not as if Blogger suddenly had a lot of porn bloggers, some of the sex blogs that will be forcefully privatized have been members of this site for over a decade. Some of these blogs probably use Blogger as a form of steady income, as Blogger is one of the few free blogging services that allows JavaScript based advertising services. This has prompted Internet Archives owner Jason Scott to scramble to archive the blogs before they are gone for good.
It seems that the only possible option for established porn blogs on Blogger is to export their content and head on over to sites like Wordpress.com or Tumblr. But for blogs that have had their content monetized by third party services are out of luck, as Wordpress.com does not allow third party advertising methods on their blogs, or in the case of Tumblr, a useful way to implement it.
What do you think? Are you for or against Blogger's new policy to exclude sex and nudity from its blogging service?
EDIT: Well, that didn't take long. Just a couple days after Google made the announcement of shielding nudity from the public eye, they backpedaled and retracted their claim. Mentioning:
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. So rather than implement this change, we’ve decided to step up enforcement around our existing policy prohibiting commercial porn.