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."
Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not getting the revenue would be my guess...
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...?
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.
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.
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Case Study: Why the Cloud and Freeium do not wo (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
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.
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.
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?
Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:anti-sex ad policy? (Score:2, Insightful)
And you think that gun ads are about killing people. Sounds like another mix up.
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).