Days after announcing a ban on publishing sexually explicit images on Blogger blogs, Google has taken a U-turn on its decision following public outrage. Instead, it said it would focus on enforcing its existing policy prohibiting commercial porn on these blogs.
Announcing the move on the Blogger Help forums, Google’s Jessica Pelegio posted, “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.”
She 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.
“Bloggers whose content is consistent with this and other policies do not need to make any changes to their blogs,” the post said.
The search giant, had earlier said that it will not delete existing blogs that have sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video (except for artistic, educational, documentary or scientific contexts) but would make them private after March 23, 2015. This meant that the content could have only be seen by the owner or admins of the blog and the people who the owner has shared the blog with.
The Internet Users Associations had condemned Google’s decision to forbid users of its Blogger platform to share images and videos of “explicitly” sexual content as an attack on freedom of expression.
