Heeding ‘ton of feedback’ from users, company announces it won’t implement changes, but steps up enforcement of existing policy on sexually explicit content

Google has backtracked on plans to ban sexually explicit images from its blogging platform Blogger, in the face of widespread opposition from users.

The company had initially announced a ban on “sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video”, with just a few exceptions for content which offered “a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts”.

It planned to enforce the ban from 23 March, when any user with offending material still on their blog would be forced to turn it into a private site.

Now, the company has backed down. Jessica Pelegio, a social product support manager at Google, wrote: “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.”

“Blog owners should continue to mark any blogs containing sexually explicit content as ‘adult’ so that they can be placed behind an ‘adult content’ warning page,” she added.

Bloggers existing policy is much looser when it comes to adult content than many other providers. Since at least 2012 The company has warned users to “not use Blogger as a way to make money on adult content”, and says it does not allow “illegal sexual content, including image, video or textual content that depicts or encourages rape, incest, bestiality, or necrophilia.”

Users are also not allowed to “post or distribute private nude or sexually explicit images or videos without the subject’s consent.” That ban, which has been in place since November 2014, was matched by social news site Reddit this week. The company’s chief executive, Ellen Pao, said that “effective 10 March, Reddit will prohibit any photograph, video or digital image of a person who is nude or engaged in a sexual act if the subject has not given permission for it to be used”.

Google’s attempt to broaden that ban to cover all sexual images was met with opposition from sex bloggers, for whom the platform is one of the most popular.

Zoe Margolis, author of the sex blog Girl With a One-Track Mind, wrote in the Guardian that “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.”