from www.theverge.com – Google is sending notices to owners of adult-themed Blogger sites warning them of a change to its terms of service that will crackdown on accounts that make money from displaying adult ads.
The email, publicized by columnist and blogger Violet Blue, states that Google will update its terms of service on June 30th to “strictly prohibit the monetization of Adult content on Blogger.” The company warns that if blogs continue to display adult advertisements after that date they will be removed.
It appears that Google is contacting Blogger website owners that have already manually marked their blog as Adult or are identified to be running explicit ads.
However, some users have taken to Google’s Product Forums to question the new policy, with some blog owners surprised that they received the email despite the fact they have never posted on their website.
Google’s current terms of service do permit sharing of adult content on Blogger, but asks users to “not use Blogger as a way to make money on adult content.”
It also says users shouldn’t create blogs “where a significant percentage of the content is ads or links to commercial porn sites.” Disgruntled Bloggers will have the option of jumping ship to Yahoo, which has already said it won’t restrict porn on newly acquired website publishing service Tumblr. We have contacted Google for clarification on its new policy and will update the post accordingly.