Saturday, February 28, 2015
Jon Stewart takes down Fox and the rest of the Right (which, of course, is wrong) Wing
In the Category of Everybody Knows That
Confessions from Straight Men Who Watch Gay Porn
by Eric Shorey | November 11, 2014
http://www.thebacklot.com/confessions-from-straight-men-who-watch-gay-porn/11/2014/
That’s all well and good, but it isn’t too often that you hear straight men talking about their love of gay porn. So when a thread asking heterosexual men about their interest in same sex imagery popped up on Reddit’s AskMen page, my interest was certainly piqued. In response to the question “Do any straight guys watch gay porn as a fetish rather than an aspect of your sexual orientation“, a handful of internet users offered up their own experiences.
The original poster had this to say about his own experiences:
It is my guess that a lot of straight guys consume gay porn. It is also my guess that the stigma of doing so is far less than it used to be. Many people today consider transsexual porn to be primarily of interest to straight males. I view it all but do not consider myself gay. I have a very high sex drive and perhaps a smattering of sexual addictions. I am happy with myself and my gf is fully aware of this. So, guys, tell me if i’m the only one.
The responses from other redditers were varied. Some condemned him as a closet-case, while others kept an open mind on the subject. Even fewer straights admitted to their own gay porn habits. Here are some highlights from the conversation:
From user elementality22:
F*ck it, I’ll be the one dude to be honest, yeah I watch some gay porn. I find they are less fake about it most times, a lot less fake moaning and such … I just tend to find a lot of gay porn is relevant to my interests in a way that some straight porn isn’t. I don’t like watching sloppy, gaggy blow jobs and on the whole gay porn has much cleaner bjs at least from what I’ve seen. It’s about 70/30 straight to gay watching. I don’t like twinks or super swole dudes. I generally watch college vids, hazing type deals, straight for pay, nothing with kissing/caressing. Just the sex please. I’ve never had any inclination for a male outside of gay porn, I like many other guys here were totally grossed out by it and it became this taboo in my mind and then I decided to just watch one and saw that it really wasn’t so bad. I’m sort of a voyeur in that regard and just like watching gay, straight, trans, whatever.
From user McTossyPants:
I like it. The problem with the hetero stuff is that too often the women are just used as toys. It’s easier to find gay stuff with two active participants. However, straight stuff where both are active is the hottest thing ever.
But I don’t watch stuff with “masculine” guys. I only watch twinks.
Also, IRL I don’t ever want to actually do anything sexual with a guy. I only think of girls that way.
Edit: I don’t even like hunks or jocks in straight stuff. I like twinkish straight dudes.
Also, I don’t care for anal. Oral only, please.
From user SchizophrenicMC:
On rare occasion, I watch gay porn because my dick tells me that’s what I want to be watching. I’m not gay, I just sometimes get this urge that says “watch a man rail another dude in the ass”.
Normally, though, I watch straight porn or girl/girl.
An Anonymous user wrote:
Sure do man. Not gay, no real intention to do a dude. But holy crap man, a man giving a blow job is so awesome, they just know what theyre doing.
So, what can be learned from the thread? Well, not too much. Some straight men like gay porn, others don’t! And you know what, that’s fine. Keep on keepin’ on, boys!
Sure do man. Not gay, no real intention to do a dude. But holy crap man, a man giving a blow job is so awesome, they just know what theyre doing.
So, what can be learned from the thread? Well, not too much. Some straight men like gay porn, others don’t! And you know what, that’s fine. Keep on keepin’ on, boys!
# # #
Are those abs painted on? Pic of the Day
Great pic and in close up looks pretty natural...not a lot of hair, just blond. But the shadows on the abs look so damn deep. Maybe just extremely dedicated to intensive work-outs!
Friday, February 27, 2015
Google still sucks...and not in the good way
The Daily Mail grabbed Google by the balls, squeezed hard, and Google bowed down. I don’t know where they found the balls to stand up again, but apparently the blowback against their stupid ass decision was so intense they had to reverse the reversal of the policy they had in place, which was that adults can make up their own minds about what they want to see/read on the Internet. Regardless, I will never trust Google or Blogger again and will be looking for an alternative platform. Your suggestions welcome. And thank you sincerely for all the support!
From Rational Wiki...
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Daily_Mail
The Daily Mail (aka, Hate Mail, Daily Fail, Daily Heil, Daily Moan and so on), is a reactionary tabloid rag masquerading as a "traditional values," middle-class newspaper that is, in many ways, the worst of the British gutter press (only Rupert Murdoch's Sun is worse). Its weighty Sunday counterpart is the Mail on Sunday.
The Daily Mail is to the U.K. what the New York Post is to the United States, and what the Drudge Report is to the Internet: to wit, gossipy tabloid "journalism" for those who cannot digest serious news, with a flippantly wingnut editorial stance. The Daily Mail is notable among British tabloids for rejecting the standard red-top banner in order to try to appear more upmarket and respectable, although it does sometimes go in for the full front-page picture or headline characteristic of the populist rags. It is also notorious for its frequent harassment of individuals, campaigns of hate directed at various minorities, and willfully deceiving and lying to its readers.
GOOGLE REVERSES BLOGGER CENSORSHIP EDICT
http://www.newsfactor.com/news/Google-Reverses-Blogger-Porn-Limits/story.xhtml?story_id=12300BB19F1L
After Google announced a ban on the public sharing of sexually explicit content on its Blogger Web site, the tech giant has reversed course, saying it will instead step up enforcement of its existing policy prohibiting commercial porn.
Earlier this week, Google had announced that as of March 23, users of Blogger.com (which is owned by Google) would no longer be able to share sexually explicit content with the general public. Instead, Google said, any blog with adult content would be marked "private" and the publisher of the blog would have to send out a personal invitation to anyone who might want to view the blog.
Just three and a half days later, however, Google abruptly reversed course and announced Friday that it would revert back to its original policy regarding blogs with sexual content, which are currently hidden behind an "adults-only" warning page.
Writing for Google's Blogger Team, Social Product Support Manager Jessica Pelegio said that users whose blogs were consistent with Blogger's existing policies (including the labeling of adult content) would not need to make any changes.
Massive Backlash
"We've had a ton of feedback," Pelegio said, "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."
The Blogger Help Forum was (and still is) crammed with threads complaining about the proposed change, with the majority protesting Google's abrupt decision to censor the content, and the rest trying to determine whether their site would be affected.
A particularly passionate objection was posted by Darren Grathy, a blogger operating a site called "Impregnation Erotica." Among other things, he warned that the new policy was just a prelude to greater censorship.
"Set to private and by 'invitation only,' our Web sites will be all but destroyed," Grathy argued. "The fact that you haven't deleted our content is of grim consolation when you kill off our entire userbase! We cannot possibly invite hundreds of thousands of people one by one. With no public access, our sites will wither from inattention and lack of new insight and comment. What will be left in mere months will be a collection of dead domains, dessicated corpses of once vibrant and wholesome adult communities laid waste by this policy decision. And I have no doubt that next year or the year after that, the plan would be to quietly delete it all, once the brow-beaten webmasters were too few in number to put up any sort of resistance."
Another user, a book reviewer named Johnnie-Marie Howard, wrote: "...sometimes the pictures and words have cussing. Am I really going to be set to private where no one can then see my blog? what's going to happen? I'm not really understanding anything I have read about it so far."
Following Google's change of heart, Blogger support staff were busy trying to reassure worried users.
"Does this mean nothing will change?" Howard asked.
"Correct! Have a good one ;)," a Blogger staffer replied.
Pressure from Overseas?
Largely overlooked by U.S.-based media was a gleeful article by the UK's Daily Mail, which took credit this past Monday for pushing Google to adopt a stronger anti-porn policy. The Daily Mail has been aggressively targeting major social media and content Web sites, arguing that they have a responsibility to help reduce the availability of online pornography. The paper also played a role in pushing the British government to adopt more stringent labeling standards for online erotica.
Interestingly, the paper's front page Friday lacked any coverage of Google's reversal of plans.\
Earlier this week, Google had announced that as of March 23, users of Blogger.com (which is owned by Google) would no longer be able to share sexually explicit content with the general public. Instead, Google said, any blog with adult content would be marked "private" and the publisher of the blog would have to send out a personal invitation to anyone who might want to view the blog.
Just three and a half days later, however, Google abruptly reversed course and announced Friday that it would revert back to its original policy regarding blogs with sexual content, which are currently hidden behind an "adults-only" warning page.
Writing for Google's Blogger Team, Social Product Support Manager Jessica Pelegio said that users whose blogs were consistent with Blogger's existing policies (including the labeling of adult content) would not need to make any changes.
Massive Backlash
"We've had a ton of feedback," Pelegio said, "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."
The Blogger Help Forum was (and still is) crammed with threads complaining about the proposed change, with the majority protesting Google's abrupt decision to censor the content, and the rest trying to determine whether their site would be affected.
A particularly passionate objection was posted by Darren Grathy, a blogger operating a site called "Impregnation Erotica." Among other things, he warned that the new policy was just a prelude to greater censorship.
"Set to private and by 'invitation only,' our Web sites will be all but destroyed," Grathy argued. "The fact that you haven't deleted our content is of grim consolation when you kill off our entire userbase! We cannot possibly invite hundreds of thousands of people one by one. With no public access, our sites will wither from inattention and lack of new insight and comment. What will be left in mere months will be a collection of dead domains, dessicated corpses of once vibrant and wholesome adult communities laid waste by this policy decision. And I have no doubt that next year or the year after that, the plan would be to quietly delete it all, once the brow-beaten webmasters were too few in number to put up any sort of resistance."
Another user, a book reviewer named Johnnie-Marie Howard, wrote: "...sometimes the pictures and words have cussing. Am I really going to be set to private where no one can then see my blog? what's going to happen? I'm not really understanding anything I have read about it so far."
Following Google's change of heart, Blogger support staff were busy trying to reassure worried users.
"Does this mean nothing will change?" Howard asked.
"Correct! Have a good one ;)," a Blogger staffer replied.
Pressure from Overseas?
Largely overlooked by U.S.-based media was a gleeful article by the UK's Daily Mail, which took credit this past Monday for pushing Google to adopt a stronger anti-porn policy. The Daily Mail has been aggressively targeting major social media and content Web sites, arguing that they have a responsibility to help reduce the availability of online pornography. The paper also played a role in pushing the British government to adopt more stringent labeling standards for online erotica.
Interestingly, the paper's front page Friday lacked any coverage of Google's reversal of plans.\
# # #
Finally: A Wearable That Lets You Charge Your Gadgets by Jerking Off
http://gizmodo.com/finally-a-wearable-that-lets-you-charge-your-gadgets-b-1688232359
WANKBAND
Ashley Feinberg
Yesteray 1:40pm
Yesteray 1:40pm
We've all shaken a fitness tracker or two in our lives to beat the system. But now, Pornhub is making a wearable meant for just that—shaking. And beating. It's called the Wankband, and it lets you charge your gadgets by jacking off. It was only a matter of time.
According to Pornhub's (decidedly SFW) video, a small inner valve in the band sends a weight up and down with each loving, lonely stroke. The extra-special alone time bracelet stores that generated energy, which you can then use to juice up all the similarly special gadgets in your life.
Of course, the amount of power it generates is almost definitely not going to be enough to give anything a full charge. But with the right attitude, days to kill, and a lock on your mom's basement door, we're sure you can persevere.
The Wankband is still in development right now, but you can head over to Pornhub's (SFW) wearable landing page to sign up for your chance to get in on the beta round, which Pornhub tells us should start "in the coming months." Coming months, indeed. (I hate myself.) [Pornhub]
According to Pornhub's (decidedly SFW) video, a small inner valve in the band sends a weight up and down with each loving, lonely stroke. The extra-special alone time bracelet stores that generated energy, which you can then use to juice up all the similarly special gadgets in your life.
Of course, the amount of power it generates is almost definitely not going to be enough to give anything a full charge. But with the right attitude, days to kill, and a lock on your mom's basement door, we're sure you can persevere.
The Wankband is still in development right now, but you can head over to Pornhub's (SFW) wearable landing page to sign up for your chance to get in on the beta round, which Pornhub tells us should start "in the coming months." Coming months, indeed. (I hate myself.) [Pornhub]
Waiting and Watching Pic of the Day
Google/Blogger: Identify the person or persons you're going to appoint to make my decisions for me.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Google and Kim Jong-Un
At its founding, Google’s mission statement was: "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Its unofficial slogan was "Don't be evil.” In January 2013, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt traveled secretly to North Korea to plead with Kim Jong-Un to stop censoring Google. Early in 2015, Google decided to be evil.
from the paternalistic-nonsense dept
Apparently, Google is getting prude in its old age,
suddenly deciding that it will no longer allow "adult" content on its Blogger
platform, giving bloggers on the site just 30
days to find another home or have their content set to private. Here's the note
that some bloggers received yesterday:
Of course, as Violet Blue notes, this is only the latest in a long line of moves by Google to stifle, hide or block any content that is sexual in nature. Here's just a snippet of a much longer piece by Blue, detailing the timeline of recent decisions by Google, all of which push content the company deems inappropriate further and further away:
It was one thing when Google Plus rolled out in June 2011 with a strict anti-adult, no sexual content policy for its troubled attempt at a social network; many of us just didn't bother participating, knowing how the content-policy ax always falls (not on the side of artists, writers, activists, LGBT people, or cultural outsiders who speak up).I'm sure there are plenty of good business reasons why Google no longer wants to have this kind of content available on its site, but it's disappointing on multiple levels. It's not "censorship" in the classical sense, but it does seem like a really bad move by Google. It's a company that should know better, and often holds itself up as enabling more speech around the globe, and avoiding making any sort of "artistic" decisions on the worthiness of content. It is immensely troubling that this company now suddenly wants to determine which content it thinks is "appropriate" and which is not, not based on any legal requirements, but on a very subjective standard. Facebook did this sort of thing from early on in doing ridiculous things like banning "breastfeeding" images, and one would hope that Google would take a more reasonable stand. On top of that, giving people just 30 days to figure out where to go, when many have built up their blogs for over a decade just seems tremendously callous.
But Google began its palpable aggression against erotic content in June 2013 when Google banned adult content from Google Glass apps, as well as enacting an affiliate porn purge across its Blogger platform.
December 2013 saw Android's Google Keyboard updated to exclude over 1,400 "inappropriate" words, returning no results for typing or swiping words including "intercourse," "lovemaking," "condom," "panty," "preggers" and "STI."
In February 2014 adult and erotic content was banned from Chromecast, followed by March 2014's ban and purge of adult and erotic apps from Google Play (Android's app and media hub).
April saw an ongoing series of Google Search algorithm updates that savaged existing adult website rankings, causing major disruptions in traffic and revenues for many websites.So it's no surprise that many people believe that Google won't uphold its "freedom of expression" stance when it comes to organic adult search results.
Google is a private company and can make its own choices, but this one seems like a particularly bad choice, which may have other consequences as well. For years, Google has pushed back on demands from copyright holders to magically monitor all its content, saying that it's just not possible. Yet, here it is now saying that it's willing to do exactly that, including making "artistic" judgments on the merits of whether adult content is purely prurient or done for a more artistic or educational reason. The company seems to be opening itself up to charges that if it can make such determinations for that type of content, it can also magically figure out what other content is "infringing" or not. This seems like a move that the company will regret.
What it comes down to is this
Google, a corporate entity, believes that nakedness and sex posted on Blogger are in themselves objectionable and, further, that they know better than any adult what is "safe" for them to view for art appreciation, entertainment, mental or physical stimulation, or any other purpose.
Dear Google/Blogger: Please identify the person or persons you’re going to appoint to make my decisions for me.
2008: Net Censorship Law Struck Down Again
This article from 2008 bears re-reading...
http://www.wired.com/2008/07/net-censorship/
Net Censorship Law Struck Down Again
BY RYAN SINGEL
07.22.08 | 11:06 AM
A federal appeals court struck down as unconstitutional a Clinton-era law that would have forced websites with adult material to verify visitors’ ages, dealing another blow to the government in a 10-year court battle over net censorship.
The 3rd U.S. Circurt Court of Appeals upheld on Tuesday a 2007 lower-court decision that the Child Online Protection Act violated the First Amendment since it was not the most effective way to keep children from visiting adult websites.
Both courts also found that the standards for material that had to be hidden from open browsing were so loosely defined that any content not suitable for a four-year-old would have been hidden behind a age-verification firewall.
"Unlike COPA, filters permit adults to determine if and when they want to use them and do not subject speakers to criminal or civil penalties," the court wrote.
The Justice Department has been defending COPA since its passage in 1998, when the ACLU and others filed suit against the censorship law and won an immediate injunction. Since then, the court battle has made its way twice to the Supreme Court, though the government has never won any clear battles in the dispute.
COPA makes it a crime to knowingly post material that is "harmful to minors" on the web for "commercial purposes" without having some method — such as a credit card — to verify a visitor’s age.
Critics assailed the law for infantilizing the internet and requiring website operators — including news sites — to live in fear of prosecution if even a small part of their website contained adult material.
COPA was intended to be a narrower version of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which would have catastrophically extended the rules of television ‘decency’ to the internet had the Supreme Court not emphatically rejected it in 1997.
In its ruling (.pdf), however, the appeals court did not see much of a difference between the two laws.
"It is apparent that COPA, like the Communications Decency Act before it, ‘effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another,’ Reno, 521 U.S. at 874, 117 S.Ct. at 2346, and thus is overbroad. For this reason, COPA violates the First Amendment," the judges wrote. "These burdens would chill protected speech."
The ACLU’s Chris Hansen, a First Amendment lawyer for the rights group, applauded the decision.
"For years the government has been trying to thwart freedom of speech on the Internet, and for years the courts have been finding the attempts unconstitutional," Hansen wrote in a statement. "The government has no more right to censor the internet than it does books and magazines."
The Justice Department is not pleased with the decision and is reviewing its options, according to spokesman Charles Miller.
"We are disappointed that the Third Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a Congressional statute designed to protect our children from exposure to sexually explicit material on the internet," Miller said.
The ACLU, suing on behalf of Salon magazine sexualhealth.com and the owner of the Urban Dictionary website, successfully argued that the law criminalizes constitutionally protected speech, would drive pornography sites to non-U.S. servers, and prevent the spread of health information due to people’s unwillingness to register to read sensitive information.
They also argued the law would apply to anyone who wrote about mature subjects who also happened to have Google or Yahoo ads on their personal blog.
For its part, the government says the law was intended to apply to pornographic websites, not news sites. It also argues COPA’s age restrictions would work with content filters.
The government is likely to appeal Tuesday’s decision for a full hearing at the appeals court or to the Supreme Court.
# # #
The Meaning of Blogger’s Flag
Google once stated that censorship "is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression." That is no longer the case. Google has now aligned itself with hate groups such as the Family Research Council (http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/family-research-council).
Everyone concerned about the fact that mega-corporations are engaging in a bold, aggressive campaign to decide for adults what is acceptable for them to see and read...
and
and
The new policy will go into effect on the 23rd of March 2015. After this policy goes into effect, Google will restrict access to any blog identified as being in violation of its revised policy. No content will be deleted, but only blog authors and those with whom they have expressly shared the blog will be able to see the content we've made private.
As one of the least tech-savvy bloggers around, can anyone tell me how to invite all of my Buddies to share the blog? What are the relative merits of these alternatives?
Blogger porn ban
Zoe Margolis
Wednesday 25 February 2015 08.39 EST
Wednesday 25 February 2015 08.39 EST
Google’s decision to force blogs hosting adult content into becoming invitation-only services is a deliberate and ill-considered sabotage on free speech and connectivity, writes Zoe Margolis, of sex blog Girl With A One-Track Mind
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/25/blogger-porn-ban-google-zoe-margolis
Google has steadily been cutting down on adult-oriented material hosted on Blogger, its blogging platform, over the last few years. Previously, bloggers could freely post “images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity,” albeit behind an warning screen that Blogger implemented in 2013.
Then, Blogger said “censoring this content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression”, so bloggers rightly assumed that they would be free to continue to post adult content.
But in a huge U-turn, Google has changed its position and decided that as of 23 March, there will be no explicit material allowed on Blogger unless it offers “public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts” – all which will be determined by Google. Quite how they will do that has not been made clear.
Anything else that does not fall into this category will be restricted to private-only viewing, where only people who have been invited by the blog’s creator will be able to see them; it won’t appear in search results.
This is like having a public library where all the shelves are empty and all the books imperceptible to readers, and authors are required to stand there in person, handing out copies of their work to those hoping to read it. What Google is doing, in reality, is making these blogs invisible. It effectively kills them off.
Some people might read this and think: “Well, Google just doesn’t want to host porn for free any more, that’s why it’s bringing in these restrictions, what’s wrong with that?” To some extent, they’d have a point, because other blog platforms are available and if a users’ sole intent is to make money, then they’re a business and should pay for hosting, not expect to get it for free.
But this new policy has more far-reaching and long-term implications than just censorship and a loss of profit for those posting explicit content, and here’s an example of why: it breaks the internet.
My own personal blog (no explicit images, but graphic descriptions of sex) has had more than 8m readers over 11 years of being hosted on Blogger. If I was forced to make it private and invitation-only, there is no conceivable way that I could contact every single one of those readers and send them a password link to access it.
When I joined Blogger in 2004, I did more than just sign up to publishing a sex blog, I joined a community of people: other erotic writers, non-erotic writers, sex educators, feminist porn-makers, memoirists, political activists, journalists, photographers, news-sharers, comedians, artists, comic creators and more. A disparate bunch of people joined together by one thing in common: we all posted stuff on the internet and then shared it.
This network – indeed the Internet itself – is made up of links. You find a link, click through, and expect to arrive at a page containing some form of content, whether that be text, images, video, or audio files. From its inception, blogging has been about people sharing links; indeed, one of the UK’s first well-known blogs back in 1999 was the link-sharing LinkMachineGo.
By forcing blogs – any blogs, regardless of their content – to become private, it means the link to that blog will no longer work: people clicking through without a password would arrive on a non-existent page. Thousands of other bloggers and websites may have shared that blog’s link over some years, and as a result of this policy change, that link would effectively be dead. In essence, what this means is that a long-standing, interactive, supportive community will be killed off overnight.
There is no justification for this. The fact that these blogs feature nudity (so?) is irrelevant. What Google are doing here goes against the very ethics of the web and their own motto, Don’t Be Evil.
Google itself has previously said: “Blogger increases the availability of information, encourages healthy debate, and makes possible new connections between people”, but this new policy completely undermines that and rather than forge connections, it is cutting them off.
Forcing millions of blogs to become private is not just a free-speech issue, or one about making adult content harder to find (Google’s own search tool makes that argument redundant), but boils down to Google sabotaging the integrity of the web – and how it functions – and it is for this reason that we need to oppose this narrow-minded and short-sighted policy.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/25/blogger-porn-ban-google-zoe-margolis
Google has steadily been cutting down on adult-oriented material hosted on Blogger, its blogging platform, over the last few years. Previously, bloggers could freely post “images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity,” albeit behind an warning screen that Blogger implemented in 2013.
Then, Blogger said “censoring this content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression”, so bloggers rightly assumed that they would be free to continue to post adult content.
But in a huge U-turn, Google has changed its position and decided that as of 23 March, there will be no explicit material allowed on Blogger unless it offers “public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts” – all which will be determined by Google. Quite how they will do that has not been made clear.
Anything else that does not fall into this category will be restricted to private-only viewing, where only people who have been invited by the blog’s creator will be able to see them; it won’t appear in search results.
This is like having a public library where all the shelves are empty and all the books imperceptible to readers, and authors are required to stand there in person, handing out copies of their work to those hoping to read it. What Google is doing, in reality, is making these blogs invisible. It effectively kills them off.
Some people might read this and think: “Well, Google just doesn’t want to host porn for free any more, that’s why it’s bringing in these restrictions, what’s wrong with that?” To some extent, they’d have a point, because other blog platforms are available and if a users’ sole intent is to make money, then they’re a business and should pay for hosting, not expect to get it for free.
But this new policy has more far-reaching and long-term implications than just censorship and a loss of profit for those posting explicit content, and here’s an example of why: it breaks the internet.
My own personal blog (no explicit images, but graphic descriptions of sex) has had more than 8m readers over 11 years of being hosted on Blogger. If I was forced to make it private and invitation-only, there is no conceivable way that I could contact every single one of those readers and send them a password link to access it.
When I joined Blogger in 2004, I did more than just sign up to publishing a sex blog, I joined a community of people: other erotic writers, non-erotic writers, sex educators, feminist porn-makers, memoirists, political activists, journalists, photographers, news-sharers, comedians, artists, comic creators and more. A disparate bunch of people joined together by one thing in common: we all posted stuff on the internet and then shared it.
This network – indeed the Internet itself – is made up of links. You find a link, click through, and expect to arrive at a page containing some form of content, whether that be text, images, video, or audio files. From its inception, blogging has been about people sharing links; indeed, one of the UK’s first well-known blogs back in 1999 was the link-sharing LinkMachineGo.
By forcing blogs – any blogs, regardless of their content – to become private, it means the link to that blog will no longer work: people clicking through without a password would arrive on a non-existent page. Thousands of other bloggers and websites may have shared that blog’s link over some years, and as a result of this policy change, that link would effectively be dead. In essence, what this means is that a long-standing, interactive, supportive community will be killed off overnight.
There is no justification for this. The fact that these blogs feature nudity (so?) is irrelevant. What Google are doing here goes against the very ethics of the web and their own motto, Don’t Be Evil.
Google itself has previously said: “Blogger increases the availability of information, encourages healthy debate, and makes possible new connections between people”, but this new policy completely undermines that and rather than forge connections, it is cutting them off.
Forcing millions of blogs to become private is not just a free-speech issue, or one about making adult content harder to find (Google’s own search tool makes that argument redundant), but boils down to Google sabotaging the integrity of the web – and how it functions – and it is for this reason that we need to oppose this narrow-minded and short-sighted policy.
# # #
P.S. Let's see what effect changing the blog description has: "A blog for the public benefit of expanding awareness, tolerance, and camaraderie in artistic, educational, documentary, and scientific contexts.
More to Come...or Maybe Not
In case you haven't seen it yet...
Adult content policy on Blogger
Starting March 23,
2015, you won't be able to publicly share images and videos 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's sexually explicit or shows graphic nudity as explained
in our content
policy.
AND MY RESPONSE...
Insufficient justification. Who are you to sit in judgment about what is
artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific?
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
No service this morning
No internet connection before going to work so here's a Pic of the Evening. Nice socks... ;-)
