Speech on Blogger Will Henceforth Exist at Google's Discretion

LOS ANGELES—Google's announcement yesterday of a new "adult content policy" for Blogger that, as of March 23, restricts users' ability to "publicly share images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity"—unless Google says it's okay—should serve as a wakeup call to Americans that while the First Amendment protects us from the enactment of laws "abridging the freedom of speech," it cannot prevent the enactment of policies that in certain cases (such as this one) have as profound an impact on speech as a law, or even appreciably more. The updated Blogger policy is outlines by Google, as follows: Starting March 23, 2015, you won't be able to publicly share images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity on Blogger. Note: We’ll still allow nudity if the content offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts. Changes you’ll see to your existing blogs If your existing blog doesn’t have any sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video on it, you won’t notice any changes. If your existing blog does have sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video, your blog will be made private after March 23, 2015. No content will be deleted, but private content can only be seen by the owner or admins of the blog and the people who the owner has shared the blog with. Settings you can update for existing blogs If your blog was created before March 23, 2015, and contains content that violates our new policy, you have a few options for changing your blog before the new policy starts: * Remove sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video from your blog * Mark your blog as private If you’d rather take your blog down altogether, you can export your blog as a .xml file or archive your blog's text and images using Google Takeout. Effect on new blogs For any blogs created after March 23, 2015, we may remove the blog or take other action if it includes content that is sexually explicit or shows graphic nudity as explained in our content policy. Talk about a walled-garden. The move by Google redefines a term that Apple, another porn-phobic mega-corporation, has all but trademarked. Only in this case, the fallout will inevitably be severe for many, many blogs. As ZDNET's Violet Blue puts it, "When Google forces its 'unacceptable' Blogger blogs to go dark, it will break more of the Internet than you think. Countless links that have been accessible on Blogger since its inception in 1999 will be broken across the Internet." Blue also notes in her evisceration of Google's decision the unprecedented level of control that it will have on adult blogs going forward. "After Google's change is implemented, there will be no way to find and discover adult blogs on the Blogger platform," she wrote yesterday. "The only way to find a post from a blog marked adult—or to find a Blogger blog that falls outside Google's moving-target definition for acceptable nudes—will be to receive an invitation directly from the Blogger user who writes the blog. "Even then," she added, "to read a post, the invited person will be required to use a Google account to identify themselves, register for a Google account, or opt to view it as a 'guest.'" For Blue, a frequent critic of such moves, this latest exercise is for her a censorship too far. Noting that Google has been inching its way toward ever-greater impositions of its wholly contradictory intolerance for sexual speech for a while, she states unequivocally of this decision, "This isn't about illegal content. Or that Christians don't recommend using Blogger (not because of porn, but because they can't trust Google, either). Nor is it about malware, the actual Blogger user community, or even protecting minors from porn—something Google's Blogger warning already does. "Because determination falls on Google deciding 'other substantial benefits to the public from not taking action on the content,'" she pointedly added, "this is about content Google simply does not like." The search giant, a company that, as Blue also observes, "... arguably controls the world's ability to find information online," also prohibits Blogger bloggers in no uncertain terms from helping people find adult content. "Do not distribute sexually explicit content or graphic depictions of nudity," demands the Blogger Adult Content Policy. "Do not drive traffic to commercial pornography sites." Blue admits that Google can, as a private company, do as it wishes—earning, we might add, the gratitude of intolerant, anti-free speech groups in the process—but she also addresses the feelings and frustrations of many when she argues, "But that maxim is a red herring when cultural shocks like domestic spying shine a light on the acute role Google embodies as a public utility, and our very real need for Google not to mess with open access to information, no matter if Google 'likes' the content of that information or not. "Remember," she concluded, "Blogger's door started slamming shut on those deemed less deserving of its 'privilege' after Google walked through it." Blue is by no means the only person—and Blogger user—deeply concerned about the new policy and what it portends for both longtime and new users. The Guardian quotes Zoe Margolis, author of the "Girl with a One Track Mind" books and an 11-year Blogger user, as saying, "Either Google believes in freedom of expression, or it doesn’t. Restricting blogs which contain explicit content to ‘private only’ effectively kills them off. This is like offering a library where all the books in it are invisible to the readers unless an author is standing there and personally hands each reader a copy of their book. "Many blogs, mine included, have been on Blogger for well over a decade," she added. "These blogs are not just part of a community which offers an alternative, sex-positive, supportive network, but they also make up how the web functions: millions of interconnected links. By making these blogs invitation only, it immediately kills off all those connections, resulting in people visiting non-existent pages and all the links they click on being dead. A long-standing community will be killed off overnight.” The potential magnitude of the fallout of Google's new Blogger porn policy, which is really a policy that affects the totality of sexual speech and not just what people (and Google itself!) subjectively define as "porn," is for others yet another reminder that one should always attempt to avoid becoming ensnared or dependent upon the "services" offered by entities like Google As veteran adult producer and webmaster, Wasteland.com's Colin Rowntree, told AVN when approached for comment on the Blogger news, "While I have some sympathy for people who have had Blogger blogs for years, I pay lots and lots and lots of money on website hosting and domain registrations every month to ensure that something like this could never happen to me." Which is another way of expressing the old saw, "Nothing in life is free." Because, like it or not, leaving what you can say or show in Google's hands will from this time forward likely result to heartache, unless of course enough voices are raised in protest. "Tumblr attempted a similar move the following month (July 2013), and when Tumblr attempted to remove its adult blogs from every form of search and discovery possible, user (and observer) outcry prompted Yahoo's property to rethink its plans—and come up with a less severe solution to increasing restrictions on its sex-positive user-base," observes Blue, who likely recognizes that such responsiveness is not exactly a Google hallmark.