Google cracks down on Blogger porn profiteers

Wealthy porn bloggers, your time on Google”s Blogger platform is nearing its end.

Google is cracking down on blogs that make money off of adult-themed advertisements. Google announced the move via email sent to Blogger users, which was first reported by blogger Violet Blue.

Please be advised that on June 30th 2013, we will be updating our Content Policy to strictly prohibit the monetization of Adult content on Blogger. After June 30th, we will be enforcing this policy and will remove blogs which are adult in nature and are displaying advertisements to adult websites

Google shouldn’t have the toughest time identifying most of the sites that infringe on its new policy: Blogger lets users mark their sites as “Adult” and it’s likely these will account most the affected blogs — at least until Google does some deeper digging.

The problem, as Violet Blue points out, is that Google’s definition of “adult” is largely vague, which makes the move smell faintly of censorship. “Like with Posterous, deleting blogs is damage to the internet. Seriously: WTF @Google. Adult art is free speech; porn is legal in the US,” Blue tweeted.

Google’s stance, however, is fairly clear. “We will be updating our Content Policy to strictly prohibit the monetization of adult content on Blogger. We will remove blogs that are displaying advertisements to adult websites,” a company spokesperson told us.

Translation: While those adult blogs are probably safe, those adult-themed advertisements are certainly not.

What’s also worth pointing out is that Google’s news comes not long after Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer confirmed that Yahoo has no plans to take down adult-themed Tumblrs. All of those adult Blogger blogs may soon have a new home.