Blogger reverses its anti-porn policy following major backlash

Remember a few days ago when Google announced that Blogger accounts which host sexually explicit images will be made private next month? Yeah, people weren’t very happy about that and now the company has decided to change its mind. Instead, users hosting sexually explicit images will be required to label their blogs as “adult” which is similar to what Tumblr does currently. 

Just three days after announcing it was banning sexually explicit material on Blogger, Google said today it had changed its mind after an outcry from many long-time users of the blogging platform. “This week, we announced a change to Blogger’s porn policy,” wrote Jessica Pelegio, social product support manager at Google, in a post in a product forum. 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.” That existing policy requires blog owners with explicit content to mark them as “adult.” That triggers an “adult content” warning page.