Blogger and adult blogs

Just a word of warning to those with 'adult' blogs, Google aka Blogger have updated their adult content policy and have been sending out the following email to various bloggers:

I got this and on its face it doesn't appear to apply to me. I don't monetize my blog by advertising. That said, it makes me nervous. What's next? First it was paypal, then I hear that credit card companies won't process transactions for certain types of media, then the CDD blogs are attacked. It seems to me that something is going on here.Whether it is just the tip of the iceberg, I don't know yet.

If you're just setting out on the brave world of blogging, forget Blogger and use WordPress instead. I've never regretted my choice.

I'm surprised it took so long. That's what Google does, it buys things and then ruins them. Does anyone remember what a fun place UTube was before Google bought it?

Add Deja News to the list of things screwed up by Google. The irony being that many of the problems with 'google groups' could almost certainly be fixed in a matter of minutes but they're clearly not interested.

After reading a few blogs and articles on the subject I think I know what's going on. Blogger is a free service. You don't need a domain name and the web designer is built in. So what happened was that some industry types, mainly movie producers, signed up and made their "blog" little more than a storefront. It's like being able to advertise for free. Blogger saw this as abusive and now wants to stamp it out. So the affected blogs will be, I hope, only those that are mere shills for movie studios and link directly to products or websites that sell the products.
I'm hoping this is the case, but if my blog disappears on Sunday you'll know that I was colossally wrong. Won't be the first time. Is anybody in the house a web designer by chance?

You're so right, Guy. I used to use Meebo for my IM until Google bought it and ruined it. Now I'm on Ebuddy and it kind of sucks. I don't like Yahoo IM because Yahoo puts other crap on your computer without telling you.

If you want to chat with people on YIM or many of the other Messengers without getting ads or other crap installed on your puter I'd recommend using Pidgin:

http://www.pidgin.im/

It's free, open source and ad-free.

Thanks for the heads-up, Februs. I haven't seen any such email (yet!)

I don't make any money from my blog, nor do I carry any ads, nor do I post anything that wasn't self-made - so I hope Underling's Humblings (subtle plug there) is as safe as it can be, given its theme. Of course that theme will still offend some, but then hopefully that's what the adult content warning is for.

Google/ Blogger do seem to have acquired a bit of a reputation for axing sites without warning, but in many cases those seem to have been reinstated on appeal. One of the reasons I stay loyal to that platform is that they support Flash content, which I don't think Wordpress does. That won't be an issue for many bloggers, but none of my animations would work without it!

Bendover, I hated the Yahoo IM client too - it seems incredibly bloated. I'm a Skype convert these days - no complaints so far.

After doing more reading on this subject I'm more worried that blogs like mine might indeed be targets. This purge will be done automatically by a computer algorithm, not a human making judgments. So what does the algorithm look for? If it looks for links to "adult sites selling something" (how do you define that?) I'm probably ok. But if you let me be King for a day at Google and design the algorithm I'd merely ask "are you a blogger with an adult click through? If yes, do you link to any commercial store selling a product? (it could be books or Cheerios or hubcaps---doesn't matter). If yes---bye, bye." You see, as King I'm lazy by nature and frankly I don't care, so this is the simplest algorithm I'd know.

So I'll have to revise my earlier post. I don't expect to be around Sunday. I think I'm going to get nuked. If so, so be it. I'll start over.