Google's Blogger To Delete All 'Adult' Blogs That Have Ads 192
DougDot sends this excerpt from ZDNet:
"In three days, Google's Blogger will begin to delete scores of blogs that have existed since 1999 on Monday under its vague new anti-sex-ad policy purge. On Wednesday night at around 7pm PST, all Blogger blogs marked as 'adult' were sent an email from Google's Blogger team. The email told users with 'adult' blogs that after Sunday, June 30, 2013, all adult blogs will be deleted if they are found to be 'displaying advertisements to adult websites' — while the current Content Policy does not define what constitutes 'adult' content. To say that Twitter ignited with outrage would be an understatement. Blogger users are panicked and mad as hell at Google."
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Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not getting the revenue would be my guess...
Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:5, Funny)
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Civil liberty? Really?
Stupid business decision? Possibly (Short notice, un-clear motives, lots of pissed off people, etc). But... how is this stepping on any rights? Tons of other Blogs out there... lots of other options.
Reason for people to be pissed? Definitely... This is somehow a civil rights violation? You sir are a retard.
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Of course it's a civil rights violation. It involves the internet and a bunch of fucking geeks. Now if Google said we were removing all ads that contained gun ads, that everyone would be like Hell Yeah Google, way to stick it to ignorant rednecks. I hate double standards. Do what you will, but don't step on things we like.
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One involves sex, one involves killing people. yeah, I can see how you would mix that up.
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And you think that gun ads are about killing people. Sounds like another mix up.
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I like how you cencored 'hole' from 'asshole' and how you mistyped 'smarter' (amongst other fuck-*ps) :)
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Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:5, Insightful)
So Google is basically saying: If you want to make money from the blog we are hosting for free, you have to cut us in on the revenue?
Basically.
Explicitly they are saying: If you want to make money from hot anal orgies, you have to cut us in on the revenue.
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so.. you understand that Businesses exist & want to make money
Yet you fail to realize Freedom of speech is protecting people from government limitation.. NOT promising the people they can say what they want and have a business reprint it for the public.
Must be watching too much Fox news...
Asking google to host your advertisements blogs for free under the guise of freedom of speech is akin to demanding CNN, NBC, and Fox to show on air a 30 second advertisement commercial for your business. This advertise
Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, that's pretty much what I get out of it. The article was nearly incomprehensible, though, especially when it started rambling into irrelevancies about the number of Tumblr users.
If you want to make money, enter into a commercial relationship with a hosting service. Don't expect Google to host you for free so that you can make money off their servers and bandwidth. Being "sex-positive" isn't the same as being handing-profit-to-freeloaders-positive.
From the article:
The fact is, no one is making tons of money off porn ads or affiliate links. The porn ad business has dried up, and the well went dry for affiliate sales off ads years ago.
If that's "the fact," then why not just delete the ads and affiliate links? Why continue to host ads that aren't making any money? Do these people just enjoy ads? Do they enjoy the malware that gets installed through them and the scams that get pushed in them? This rings pretty hollow, like the sound of people who actually are making a buck or two off ads claiming that they're not and then invoking all sorts of "Google is 1950's Censorship" and "Google Hates (insert oppressed group)" because that tactic is known to misdirect anger pretty aptly in America.
In, I hope, B4 "Google is run by the NSA and therefore the first amendment applies."
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Google is run by the NSA and therefore the first amendment appl...
Shit, someone got in B4 me. Off to find another Snowden thread, I guess.
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Google is consistent in enforcing 1950s-TVs-style anti-sex morality on the web. You seen this in all of their properties. I'm sure they know which side their bread is buttered, and they stand more to lose from people being offended and calling for bans in school filters, but it's still damned annoying.
Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Normally, I'd agree with you, but in this case it doesn't appear that they're banning those sites from having ads, just restricting what kinds of ads they can have.
Unfortunately, the policy seems to be a bit vague, which makes it hard to know what types of sites they mean when they say adult sites. Presumably, you could have ads that Google has already screened without trouble, but using other ad networks or having your own banner ads would put you at risk for having your site deleted.
But, really Google needs to be a bit more open about what people can do to avoid having their site deleted, as it doesn't appear to bar people from having adult sites or advertising, just from advertising adult sites on those sites.
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"consistent in enforcing 1950s-TVs-style anti-sex morality on the web". Really? I don't remember Wally, Eddie, Lumpie or the Beaver looking at any porn. Google makes it fairly easy to find from what I hear. I've found it just for not being careful in my search terms.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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First: President Clinton was impeached, not nearly impeached.
Second: He was impeached for lying while under oath about his practices of sexual harassment, not for getting a BJ.
I agree that America needs to grow the fuck up.
Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:5, Interesting)
They can still have advertisement, they just can't have ad links to adult sites.
I'm guessing that the goal of this is in part to clamp down on human trafficking, illegal porn sites and related crimes.
From what I can tell, the real problem here is that the policy is somewhat vague. A company selling sex toys would arguably be an adult site, but is probably not what Google is intending to bar from those ads. But, without a clearer policy it's hard to say for sure.
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Yeah. That's it. I'm sure once the policy is implemented that all those things will be a thing of the past on the internet.
Just like how busting the guy at the local flea market that sells hemp-related products has eliminated weed sales everywhere, and indicting the guy that sells flame stickers for cars has stopped people from exceeding the speed limit across the nation.
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Sigh, because clearly unless you can stop all crime of a type everywhere, you shouldn't take any steps at all.
Also, WTF do flame stickers for cars have to do with speeding? And selling hemp related products is perfectly legal. I've even seen hemp products being sold by retailers.
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Sometimes, taking no steps is better then taking some steps, esp when those 'some' steps are not only ineffective but target a larger group of people engaged in legal but stigmatized behavior. It is a classic example of doing bad things to a weak group in order to appease a s
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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painting strippers with that broad brush
Part of what makes Zip-Strip [worldpaintsupply.com] a useful product is that you can pant it on with whatever size of brush you like.
Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Making sexual entertainment a crime simply gives real criminals the chains to enslave sex workers. Accepting the fact that sexual entertainment is a universal human behavior and regulating it ensures the public health problem is controlled, that society benefits in the form of taxes, and (most importantly) it ensures workers can demand the legal protections afforded to other workers in their society without fear of being prosecuted themselves. Organized criminals and corrupt cops long ago lost the keys to a sex workers jail cell in Melbourne and that's a GoodThing(TM). You'd think the same reasoning would have enough force to pull their heads out of their arses and do the same for *recreational drugs, but alas they are too busy banning water pipes and playing legislative "wack-a-mole" with "legal highs".
*Hard drugs: such as heroine and crack may "enslave" some sex workers but from what I've seen junkies are uncommon in Melbourne's regulated sex industry. Although there are some well known spots where they do try and (illegally) pimp themselves on the street without the requisite license, these are mainly frequented by a tiny minority of people who actually enjoy a $50 blow job in a public toilet, like beggars they are considered a public nuisance but in reality most are simply drug/alcohol fucked or handicapped by a mental illness/deficiency.
A basic freedom is missing from western society, consenting adults should be the masters of their own bodies to the point where the effect on others goes beyond a purely emotional offense to the mind of the observer (eg: non-custodial punishment to enforce mass vaccinations, jail for using your body to murder/rape/etc).
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Again the idiot comment of, if this doesn't stop the bad thing immediately then why bother doing it at all. If everyone were like you we would still be banging rocks together.
Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Precisely. What's "adult?"
Is a site with sexual advice "adult?" What about explicit sexual advice? What about discussion of non-normative sexuality (LBGT, BDSM, etc)? Does adult mean "Pornographic?" It's a ridiculously overbroad policy that's been horribly communicated. No one is arguing that Google doesn't have the right to make changes to its own services, but what the hell does or doesn't constitute "adult?"
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No ,it isn't over broad. It' vague becasue you can't really define all the situations. The world is full of rules like that.
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Well adult is
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Senior information like health & retirement, alumni & reunion sites, credit reporting, bars, any hobby club or organization or even forum with 18+ or 21+ limits on membership... all of these are technically "adult" sites.
I, for one, am sick of "adult" always implying adolescent, sexual, or vulgar topics. It's impossible to use the word for grown-up stuff anymore without people looking askance.
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Precisely. What's "adult?"
Wikipedia is an adult site. Seriously check out this picture on the right of this article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boobs [wikipedia.org]
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Precisely. What's "adult?"
Off the top of my head, anything related to: marriage counseling, retirement planning, realtor services, military recruitment and VA, alcoholic beverages, car rental, AARP, lottery and OTB.
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I'm guessing that the goal of this is in part to clamp down on human trafficking, illegal porn sites and related crimes.
And pray tell, how do you differentiate between illegal porn site and legal porn site ?!? I don't even have the remotest idea what "related crime" may mean.
From what I can tell, the real problem here is that the policy is somewhat vague. A company selling sex toys would arguably be an adult site, but is probably not what Google is intending to bar from those ads. But, without a clearer policy it's hard to say for sure.
So would a website discussing Kafka or Finegan's wake.
Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:4, Insightful)
How does google benefit by eliminating advertisement revenue? Where did this policy originate?
Possibly with advertisers who weren't aware that their ads might be shown next to pictures of goatse.
Scam (Score:4, Funny)
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My preferred title for this article was (Score:2)
was "Google Is Going Puritan On Us". But this one will do.
In Other News... (Score:3)
I have completely forgotten about Blogger.
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I have completely forgotten about Blogger.
Same here; in a world with uber-cheap hosting and $10/yr domain names, 'free blog' sites like that are about as hip as bell-bottoms and piano key ties.
Case Study: Why the Cloud and Freeium do not work (Score:4, Insightful)
While I fully understand the anger and frustration of bloggers and users a like at this change in Terms and Conditions, I do not really have any sympathy either.
The bloggers in question were using a free platform to derive an income from arguably questionable sources. What do they believe their actual entitlement is here?
Anybody who gives control of their "business" to a third party is probably foolish.
Anybody who gives control of their "business" to a third party and has no claim of ownership to it is probably foolish.
Anybody who gives control of their "business" to a third party and has no claim of ownership to it and was not even paying the third party is probably foolish.
Do you see where I am coming from here...?
Re:Case Study: Why the Cloud and Freeium do not wo (Score:5, Interesting)
The expense of setting up your own physical server, installing custom software, and maintaining it, would almost certainly exceed all ad revenue anyways. The very premise of these "businesses" was built on how cheap it was do dump "content" on a blog, against how much money you could earn from ads.
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Re:Case Study: Why the Cloud and Freeium do not wo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Case Study: Why the Cloud and Freeium do not w (Score:2)
I do not want to sound like I agree with what is happening, but I don't see how anybody could trust for anything else to happen.
Google's core business is advertising through the 'best' data gathering and best data indexing. That's what they do. Everything else is tertiary and transitory.
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Yes it's free and you get what you pay for, but reputation is a fickle thing that can't be bought back no matter how much money Google spends...
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"Anybody who gives control of their "business" to a third party is probably foolish."
that's all business name one that doesn't depend on some 3rd party.
"Do you see where I am coming from here...?"
That you are obtuse?
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Except you are not paying Google, they are offering you a free service as long as you follow their rules. You can always got to one of the other million or so blog sites.
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But Google's Blogger service isn't anything close to a monopoly.
Non-Google ads (Score:5, Insightful)
This is about Google eliminating non-Google adult ads on Blogger sites. A site has to have both adult content and adult ads to have a problem. Presumably the adult ads are not coming from Google.
Wordpress doesn't allow third-party advertising on their hosted blogs at all. Blogger probably does only for historical reasons. Google may be planning to transition all Blogger sites to Google ads only. Their pitch to new Blogger users suggests that new sites should only have Google ads.
If this bothers you, buy commercial hosting. It's really cheap to host a blog. Less than $10 per month.
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Imagefap (Fetlife without a stupid event calendar), and sub-Reddits (I think that's the term) that fill the gap for people that want both porn and a friends list.
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And if they're not careful they can wind up on the wrong side of an antitrust suit. Remember, that Google bought the number two ad network and at this point, there's relatively little competition between the ad networks because Google doesn't really need to compete. They've got so many eyeballs that there's little reason to go with the #2 network.
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Ya, but not that many people make $10 a month in ad revenue.
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Google abusing power as defacto gatekeeper (Score:2)
IMO googles constant attempts to filter and block access to certain types of content via its portals is abusive. There is not a lot of competition in this field. Others exist, but Google is the proverbial 800 lb gorilla, compared everyone elses 20 lb lemurs. They become a defacto gatekeeper and while other routes may still exist, when google decides to not show something it effectively ceases to exist. This gives them a lot of power, leaves the wider internet using masses dependent on google's good intentio
You get what you pay for (Score:3, Informative)
You play on someone else's site, like Blogger, you are at their mercy. Even if they've been "nice" for years, that's never guaranteed to last.
If you want control of what you put on the net, buy a domain, and then either buy a hosting site or set up your own server. It may seem expensive, but it'll be yours.
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No it won't. The company you're paying will still clam to be able to change your terms and conditions at will. You're completely at their mercy.
What do they have against Old people!!! (Score:5, Funny)
I used to have an adult blog about elderly care - you know, old people don't like being called. It's "senior", "adult" or some other euphemism to help them not to feel that they aren't old. It' s good thing I don't have it now.
Then I once walked into an adult bookstore. I was exited! I wanted a book on Social Security, Long Term care insurance, retirement homes, and things like that. You know, adult topics.
What did I see!
Naked people having S-E-X! I asked the clerk, "Young man, were is the section on Social Security?"
And he took me over to this section where there were old people - 70+ years of age - having S-E-X! He mumbled something about Rule 34 or Section 34 or something....
I called my lawyer asking him if I were breaking the "34 law". He said, "Stop drinking!" and hung up on me!
But what does Google have against old people?! I'm gonna contact the AARP and organize a protest.
I'll get every adult and senior I know to protest Google about eliminating blogs about senior issues!
Related ? (Score:5, Interesting)
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it was an artistic rendition of a breast as a mountain with minifig climbers on it
Yes, yes, go on...
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Welcome to the Cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Foes
Welcome to the Cloud. In Bad old Days, the phrase ran "All your Base are Belong to Us"
When you give up control of a media - be it television or radio or web sites or email - what you do with that media is by definition under someone else's control. If that someone else, Google or Microsoft or DPRK, object to the content for _whatever_ reason, you're kid of oout of luck. You can tweet or protest or moan about it, but the bottom line is this: That media is _theirs_ and not _yours_ and if you don't like what they do with their media, tough.
Richard Stallman has railed against "The Cloud" for years, and this is just but one of the reasons.
If you want an adult blog with adverts, buy a $500 computer and a $30 domain name and put up an adult blog. If it gets popular, buy more $500 computers. Or hire a place that rents raw compute resource, and put up _your_ web site.
I should point out that for years now, places like RackSpace have been claiming that the sites hosted there belong to their clients, not themselves. Their position is simple enough, and designed to prevent someone with deep pockets (RackSpace, for example) from being sued by some bluenose for hosting content that someone finds objectionable. Now, they can hardly do an about face and tell people hosting sites, "Oh No! We don't like -that- particular content."
A decade ago when it cost your firstborn to host a web site, using "The Cloud" made sense from a financial perspective. Now, for half a hundred dollars a month, and a sub-thousand investment in hardware, you can host your own web site, which will be picked up by search engines, and blog to your heart's content about whatever it might be you want to blog about.
I've looked at the Cloud from Both Sides Now... Screw it.
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I'm -old- ...
In days of old, you could hoist a mast and run a transmitter. It was long after that that media giants were formed and moved in. As recently as 1957, you could run a TV channel without too much difficulty, though the capital investment in equipment was pretty ferrocious.
They didn't -always- belong to the kings. Don't believe it? Look up Pirate TV.
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Where in the USA can you get a business class internet connection for 50 dollars a month? No standard connections allow servers.
I don't know about the USA, but here in rural Finland, I have 100/100Mbps fiber at home for about that price and run a web server. The service has no restrictions and no capacity limits. Last month, my webserver uploaded 348Gbyte, and this month will be about the same (343Gbyte so far). When I say there are no capacity limits, I mean it: our contract is silent on everything other than 100Mbit in each second; no ports are blocked or redirected by the ISP (however our firewall is configured to do a lot of bl
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Its bandwidth is mostly used by people streaming or downloading videos of people dancing or riding horses.
I didn't know horses could dance. No wonder you get so many downloads.
good, its about time they did that (Score:2)
Are my reading comprehension skills poor... (Score:3)
or is everyone panicking a tad too much?
As far as I can read in the e-mail they send (pics all over the place), you will only have a problem if the ads are to adult websites/content, and not just "having ads".
Relevant Quote: After June 30th 2013, we will be enforcing this policy and will remove blogs which are adult in nature and are displaying advertisements to adult websites.
Of course, I'm aware of the issue of "what kind of ads am I supposed to display, then?". I have no solution for it.
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Opportunity knocks (Score:2)
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Expect more of this (Score:2)
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a lot of these, which we all like to not publicly admit we've all seen. They fill themselves up with robo-copied text and material from other parts of the web, stuff in links to "affiliate" websites, and generally take up space. They differ a little from outright spam blogs, since a little bit of what they have is what the user is looking for, some basic content or something, but it's mostly a cover to link to for-profit sites, and doesn't represent an actual blog as blogger is intended to host.
Google has a bit of a vested interest in having blogger be a platform with real people, as it increases the value of their ads. There will be sites of value lost in the cut, but I don't think there will be very many actual people who lose their blogs.
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Re:who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
the new rule is not that "vague" at all
Define adult. Define occasional "adult". Any rule about adult content tends to be vague since that's the nature of the subject.
I'd like to see the definition too... TFA says it's not defined: "while the current Content Policy does not define what constitutes "adult" content." Is Victoria's Secret an "adult" site because they sell lingerie and other merchandise that's oriented towards adults? How about a ship-in-a-bottle [handcrafte...lships.com] websites because that's an interest generally held by adults? How about Good Vibrations [goodvibes.com] because they sell sex toys and videos? How about a nudist oriented site because it shows people in the nude? How about a "Hot girls in bikinis!" site because it shows hot girls in bikinis? How about a school swim team site because it shows girls in bikinis?
I'd really like to see how Google draws the line between adult and non-adult.
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If you can't tell the difference between "Hot girls in bikinis" and the local swim team, then you need to go back to the basics of literacy and start learning concepts like author's intent and such.
Re:who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're completely missing the point. It's not about whether or not you or I can tell the difference. It's whether or not Google can tell the difference using some arbitrary algorithm constrained by some arbitrary definition of "adult".
Here's another one. How many free-to-play MMO ads have you seen that do little more that draw the eye with hyper-sexualized fantasy women? The contents of the game are not adult in nature, but because the target demographic is teenage boys the advertisements certainly could be. How about the overtly sexual GoDaddy ads? Or the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue? Sex sells, even when the product itself has nothing at all to do with sex.
So, is an "adult ad" and advertisement for adult content, or an advertisement that contains adult content in the ad?
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Well since the author of the policy is a corporation, and the policy is vague, I think the intent is for it to mean whatever they want it to mean at that time. So who knows, if it's an ad for the local swim team on a pedophile fantasy blog then they may consider it adult,
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If you can't tell the difference between "Hot girls in bikinis" and the local swim team, then you need to go back to the basics of literacy and start learning concepts like author's intent and such.
I can tell the difference, because one has some ugly girls in it, but seriously, what about the user's intent? If the user can get the same desired effect from the photos on either website, what's the difference? As soon as we say "authors intent" then the 'hot girls in bikinis' guy can change his blog to "my ideal local swim team" with the same pictures.
I know that its easy to tell pornography when you see it, but when your blog is pornographic or acceptable based on what Google employee is vetting the bl
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the new rule is not that "vague" at all
Define adult. Define occasional "adult". Any rule about adult content tends to be vague since that's the nature of the subject.
I'd like to see the definition too... TFA says it's not defined: "while the current Content Policy does not define what constitutes "adult" content." Is Victoria's Secret an "adult" site because they sell lingerie and other merchandise that's oriented towards adults? How about a ship-in-a-bottle [handcrafte...lships.com] websites because that's an interest generally held by adults? How about Good Vibrations [goodvibes.com] because they sell sex toys and videos? How about a nudist oriented site because it shows people in the nude? How about a "Hot girls in bikinis!" site because it shows hot girls in bikinis? How about a school swim team site because it shows girls in bikinis?
I'd really like to see how Google draws the line between adult and non-adult.
I've got money down on pro-Second Amendment blogs as a target centered in the Goog's crosshairs.
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I'd gladly take your money (since when were pro 2nd amendment sites considered adult sites).
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(since when were pro 2nd amendment sites considered adult sites).
Uh, since it was made illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to own a handgun.
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Actually, some lawyers should care... (Score:3)
How Google (a private company) defines "adult" is irrelevant. Google's not under any contractual relationship with its users to provide them with free hosting and bandwidth so that the users can make money off ads whether adult or not.
I'm not arguing this for anyone, mind you, but... I believe there is an implied contract, which would mean shutting these sites down based on their content is a form of promissory estoppel resulting in a condition called detrimental reliance. Because Google offered these blogging services for free, and had not placed prior restrain on the content.
The upshot?
- A promise was made
- Relying on the promise was reasonable or forseeable
- There was actual and reasonable reliance on the promise
- The reliance was de
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In the google world, there is no delete. If you delete an email off of gmail, then remove it from your trash, it's just hidden, and the space is freed for your account. The email itself is dumped on some backup server, logs, somewhere, because google wants all information.
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Care to show proof of this, or is it just a lot of hot air?
I couldn't find anything like that in my searching.
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You know, you're right. Google apparently only maintains those backup archives for 60 days. That's not the same.
Re: Shoot first and check later (Score:2)
Re:I'm glad that people are mad at google. (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems like these days, I find myself making a comment about every two weeks saying that people should not trust Google not to take away services that they depend on. "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further." This is actually getting rather tedious at this point, and yet people still get up in arms about something they should have expected. How many times does this have to happen before everyone recognizes Google for what it is—a search engine and advertising firm that uses the promise of free services as a means to get more eyes on their ads?
The bottom line is this: If you want to provide something to the public, you really only have two viable options—set up a server yourself or set up an account with a hosting provider and back it up regularly to your own machine so that if they decide they don't want you there, you can migrate rapidly and nearly transparently to a different hosting provider. The entire notion of relying on a free web service is a fundamentally flawed concept. You cannot truly trust anything that can be taken away on a whim. You get what you pay for, and you do not get what you do not pay for, at least in the long term.
If you do not own the software that is used to provide access to your data, you do not really own the data in any meaningful sense.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
THIS (Score:2)
"If you do not own the software that is used to provide access to your data, you do not really own the data in any meaningful sense."
THIS.
Adobe - this is why we are pissed off about the Creative Cloud. You attach rent to our data.
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you really only have two viable options
The problem is that both options are even worse then Google. People abandon their blogs all the time and free services are essentially the only way how content can stay alive for longer then the author is interesting in it. If people would host their stuff on their own stuff, the Internet would be even more of a collection of dead links then it already is.
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Sex must be banned!
Sex is ok, but only with your single spouse for life, in the missionary position, with the lights off at night under the covers, without a condom.
Re:I smell OPPORTUNITY (Score:2)
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So now to move into this void you just need to:
- Provide free webhosting/blogging for adult websites
- Allow them to make money off your bandwidth/resources while paying you nothing (free)
And then just watch... the money... roll in?
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Can you name another free provider that would let you host your adult material while also hosting adult ads to make a profit?
Blogger only allowed this because they used to allow it in the past, not many other blogging services are this liberal with their rights to make money off their services.
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No, clearly this is Google going back on their "do no evil" motto, right?!
I mean someone is taking away a free service I make money off of, so clearly I have every american right to be angry and uneducated about the topic.