I've received (as has anyone running an adult blog) an email from Google - who owns Blogger.com - that states the following (Emphasis mine):
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You are receiving this message because you are the admin of a blog hosted on Blogger which is identified to have Adult content.
If your adult blog currently has advertisements which are adult in nature, you should remove them as soon as possible as to avoid any potential Terms of Service violation and/or content removals. |
This may or may not apply to Degraded Damsels, I'm not sure. I have no professional advertisements on my blog and no advertisements to adult websites.
I've read through the Terms of Service, and it's not specific at all. Probably by design. So I don't know if Blogger's new policy applies to my Ebook links or not. Nor do I know if this broadly-defined policy applies to links to other adult blogs, which are of course adult websites in their own right. The email doesn't actually say the 'advertisements to adult PAYsites'. So maybe just having a links to other blogs is grounds for violation. Who knows?
To me, this sounds like another of Google's anti-porn/erotica moves, of which there have been many in the past year or so. It also feels a lot like what happened on Lycos Clubs before they were all dropped, about a decade ago, and the entire cap-pics society moved to yahoo groups and Smartgroups (which has also died off). So this might just be the first step in Google's plans to get rid of all adult-natured blogs. I just don't know.
Seems rather pointless, in any case. To misquote one Crichton's better novels, "Porn finds a way."
I haven't decided what I'll do if my blog gets deleted. I got this email only a day ago, so I only really had 4 days warning before the new policy goes into effect. As it happens, I've been thinking about starting up a private website for my Tabitha Kohls ebooks, a sort of text-only site where I could post free flash-shorts, instead of captions, and link to my books. But moving my entire blog to a website would be a fair bit of work, and possibly expensive. I'm still trying to decide what to do.
One thing I want to do, is to create a meeting place as a back up in case Degraded Damsels does get deleted. I used to be on Yahoo Groups under the name Dasii010, and I ran several blogs. One of those blogs I never actually opened to the public, and it still exists.
I'm going to set the membership to Restricted, and I'll have to personally allow people onto the group, but I'd like everyone here to go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/absurd_tales/
You'll need a yahoo account to enter, and you'll need to leave a short description of why you want to join. Just mention Degraded Damsels in your message, and I'll let you in. Hopefully I can keep the spammers out this way. Yahoo is crawling with the little buggers!
There isn't anything worth mentioning on the group yet, but if Degraded Damsels is deleted , I'll probably put up some caps there or add a link to any knew website/tumblr/blog that I start in the future. The group will function as an emergency meeting place.
Besides the group, I also have a Tumblr account, and I routinely visit many other sites and blogs, so I'll try to spread the word there as well if I start a new blog/site.
And there is always my email account too, though is DD is deleted, I doubt my gmail account will survive. But my Tabitha Kohls email should still work: tabbyfakohls@gmail.com
Anyway, I'm probably just jumping at shadows here, but who knows? Better safe, than sorry.
- B-Rex
I received the same email myself, and since I have no advertisements on my blog, I'm likely OK. Whether or not this new policy would cover your books or not, I'm guessing it would. The email doesn't say "no adult content" but it refers to making money from any adult content ad you may have there. Since you get money from any book sales, I think that if you do not remove those, you may have a problem. But I really see no reason for the new policy and wish the email would have been more clear.
ReplyDeleteYou might be right. I don't know, I was planning on making a new blog just for Tabitha Kohls fans, but if I can't put links to the books I'm writing, it sort of defeats the whole purpose. I wonder if I could link to free books on Amazon, point people toward my author name that way?
DeleteAnyway, I don't know why Google is on this anti/erotica kick, their search engine is number one source of porn on the internet. Bing is better for images, now that Google censors content on their image search, but searching for porno paysites still works fine in the main Google search bar. Oh well, this is probably just more stupid PR crap that all big companies get into.
Hmm... there's probably a caption idea or two in all this, if I look hard enough...
Hrm, I didn't receive the email, so it may be that your blog is identified as likely having advertisements. Though, that the other poster also got the email might break that theory.
ReplyDeleteSorry you're being made to jump through hoops, but as you say, porn finds a way.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck B-Rex! Fingers crossed the worst case scenario doesn't come to pass.
ReplyDeleteTo explain why Google did actually send that post out to most of the adult content blogs one needs to look at the actual wording of the post and then also know that there are a few blogs out there who are :
ReplyDelete1. stealing others captions and posting them as their own and not giving credit to original caption creator. .. and ...
2. when a person clicks on said caption in attempt to enlarge it to read it .. instead of opening the caption it opens an advertisement from a pay x rated site which when they receive a paying member from the referral sends a small amount of cash back to the referring website. and ...
3. items 1 and 2 violate those terms of service as now layed out. I know those few websites which I refer to above did exist as of yesterday as I ran across 3 of them.
You yourself may or may not have a problem with the new rule as your site is not making money from referrals to other pay x rated adult content sites .. unless they do in fact judge your books you advertise as in violation .. but the main issue had been on the specific type of sites I mentioned above. You may be ok by virtue of the fact that your books are actually fully your own creation which are being sold.
-Monica
Very good point! I'm going to run an experiment for a while and see if Google really cares about my ebook links or not.
DeleteMy thanks to you and everyone for the helpful comments. :-)
- B-Rex
The name of your Yahoo group sounds like such a good title for a 1930s pulp magazine that I created a cover for such a book: http://dr-psychos-transformations.tumblr.com/day/2013/07/01/
ReplyDeleteI do hope you like it.
I love it! :-)
DeleteYou wouldn't mind if I use it for the homepage image of my group, would you? I might have to pump up the lips a bit more first, though...
- B-Rex