Google Reverses Ban on Adult Content on Blogger

Few days after banning explicit sexual content on Blogger, Google has given in to pressure from porn fans who were less than thrilled about the new policy. The Web giant on Friday announced

that it has changed its mind and will not crack down on adult content on its blogging platform, after all.

On Tuesday, Google published a change to Blogger's porn policy as follows:'

"This week, we announced a change to Blogger’s porn policy stating that blogs that distributed sexually explicit images or graphic nudity would be made private.

We’ve received lots of feedback about making a policy change that impacts longstanding blogs, and about the negative impact this could have on individuals who post sexually explicit content to express their identities.

We appreciate the feedback. Instead of making this change, we will be maintaining our existing policies.

What this means for blog owners

• Commercial porn will continue to be prohibited.
• If you have pornographic or sexually explicit content on your blog, you must turn on the adult content setting so a warning will show. If a blog with adult content is brought to Google’s attention and the content warning is not active, we will turn on the warning interstitial for you. If this happens repeatedly, the blog may be removed.
• If you don't have sexually explicit content on your blog and you're following the rest of the Blogger Content Policy, you don't need to make any changes to your blog."

Now, Google says that porn will be allowed on Blogger, but asked people to tag pages with nudity, so that Blogger can display an "adult content" warning page before that content is served up.

"This week, we announced a change to Blogger's porn policy," Google's Social Product Support Manager, Jessica Pelegio, wrote in a post on the Blogger Help 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 commercial porn ban, instated in 2013, strictly prohibits adult ads on Blogger and the monetization of adult content, meaning you can't start a blog on the site to make money off porn.