Last week Google announced, and PMI reported, that Google was going to be removing all content from their Blogger.com site that contained “sexually explicit or show(s) graphic nudity.” Due to significant public complaint, Google is backtracking on this move, and will continue to allow porn on their sites.
Google’s social product support manager, Jessica Pelegio, said, “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.”
The existing policy that has been in place for some time prevents blogger sites from advertising for other adult pages. Blogger will continue to give an ‘adult content’ warning on all sites that are marked as ‘adult’ before allowing users to continue to the site. This will allow those who don’t want to see the pornographic content to browse away before viewing it.
Google is also claiming that the new rule that was going into effect was never supposed to block nudity that, “offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary or scientific contexts.”
Whatever their reasons, the bottom line is that Google won’t be getting out of the porn business and they will continue to directly benefit from it.
What do you think about this move? Will this help or hurt any of your marketing strategies? Comment below.
