Slashdot Mirror
Google's Blogger To Delete All 'Adult' Blogs That Have Ads
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."
They're not getting the revenue would be my guess...
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...?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
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.
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.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
What I will add is that Google has shown more than a common tendency to pull the rug from under users who depend on their services. Recall that they arbitrarily removed access to all services for those who violated the TOS for google+. I saw educational instrutitions develop entire curriculum based on google wave, which was unceremoniously pulled. Google Dcos was morphed to Google drive, and though it still exists there really has been little done to expand the features, even though google wants to rent the services to companies. In the end companies like Apple and MS has one advantage over google in the consumer and enterprise space. MS and Apple actually are accountable to end users, while Google is simple accountable to a rotating group of advertisers. The services, such as they are, exist so that I will allow google to keep cookies on my computer, so that advertisers can track me. If the services become less valuable, then the cookies do not get set, and they end up like 2o7.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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."
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.
Battlemaster--Game with friends in medival realms
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.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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?
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
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.
21st Century Renaissance Man
Then pay the $10 a month (or less) and host your own server, and you can put any ads/content you want to on your blog (including Google ads). It's really not that expensive to get shared hosting or even a VPS to host your content on. I really fail to understand why anybody who's actually making money off their blog would host it on Blogger. They could decide to cancel that service at any time (see Reader and iGoogle). Blogger is fine if it's just a blog for you and your friends to read. But as soon as you make the decision to make money off of it, and get some serious readership, you should move to a VPS/Shared server as soon as possible.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Which is why I have been saying for years America needs to grow the fuck up. America, the country where you can't show a tit unless it has a knife buried in it and where we nearly impeached a POTUS for getting a BJ, it more than time for us to grow the fuck up and stop pretending that Leave It To Beaver was an accurate depiction of the 1950s.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
What pisses me off is how many blindly wave their little flags and defend ANY policy by "their company" like its a fricking ballclub when in reality ALL of the companies would happily have you run over with a steamroller if it would give them a 20% bounce in stock price.
So let us be clear folks, NONE of these companies are your "friends" NONE of these companies "have your interests at heart" at the end it ALL comes down to their bottom line and the agenda of the corp, no amount of flag waving or treating them like ballclubs will change that.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
And you think that gun ads are about killing people. Sounds like another mix up.
Ex taxi driver from Australia - happy hookers were the norm here 25yrs ago, AFAICT they still are. I must have had at least a couple of hundred strippers/hookers in my cab during the 3yrs I was driving and I concur "I don't think I ever even heard a hard luck story more than this or that girl had a BF that was an asshole.". Probably helps that brothels, strip clubs, and private escorts are all legal businesses over here, they pay their rates and taxes just like everyone else, they must be licensed and are subjected to regular health checks. From a purely logical POV the fact they may be asked to do something they find unpleasant is no different to asking a plumber to clean out a septic tank. While on the subject of pleasure most taxi drivers would rather transport a hooker, stripper, athlete, cat in a cage, in preference to a social snob in a suit. In my experience young drunken women in groups of 3 or more are amongst the worst behaved passengers and seeing-eye dogs are amongst the best.
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).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.