Not even a week passed and Google has already backtracked on the decision of banning blogs with explicit sexual content on its blogging platform. The company, which owns Blogger, had announced a change in its Adult Content Policy that would make all blogs with this kind of content private, effective March 23rd.
What changed? Public outcry.
"We've had a ton of feedback, in particular about the introduction of a retroactive change (some people have had accounts for 10+ years)," Google's Jessica Pelegio wrote on the company's product forum. Google heard about "the negative impact on individuals who post sexually explicit content to express their identities" and decided not to go forward with the decision.
"Rather than implement this change, we've decided to step up enforcement around our existing policy prohibiting commercial porn," Pelegio acknowledged.
Here is the difference: you can write your sexy stuff at Blogger, you can be very explicit and pornographic, but you cannot use the platform to profit from it. In the previous decision, earlier this week, Google told bloggers their sites would be turned into private mode automatically, although not deleted.
The decision followed some restrictions Google has been imposing regarding adult content - banning blogs from displaying adverts for adult websites in 2013 and cancelling ads to any kind of porn content in its advertising platform last summer.
But users were extremely angry at the company.
"I have spent hundreds of hours building and promoting my blog, just one of thousands who have done so," wrote Derren Grathy, webmaster of the blog 'Impregnation Erotica'.
"You force me and the thousands of honest webmasters like me to take my efforts elsewhere, or to simply give up our passionate endeavors," he complained, in a letter posted on the products forum.
He claimed that Blogger is ruining itself and accused the platform of destroying a wealth of talent, enthusiasm, and drive - the sort that made the platform a relevant service for the past decade.
This feedback, alongside many others, proved useful. Google is bringing sexy back, so nothing will change for the people who have blogs containing sexually explicit content - they already mark their sites as "adult".
This ensures the blog is placed behind an "adult content" warning page and nobody finds them on search results without being told what's inside.
Pelegio confirmed that bloggers who follow these guidelines don't have to do anything else. Google has a ton of services and projects, but shunning away its users isn't in its plans.
