An Important Content Announcement for SBBN Readers

Rita Hayworth publicity still Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl, courtesy Dr. Macro.

 

Long-time SBBN readers know that this blog began back on the Blogger (Google) platform many years ago, and along with She Blogged By Night came its slightly naughty sister blog, Technoknob. SBBN is now on my own website with a WordPress install but Technoknob, a blog with a teeny tiny bit of infamy, remains on Blogger.

Blogger has recently announced that they no longer allow nudity, except for what they personally deem has enough “substantial public benefit” to be “allowable.”

Every Blogger user behind an “adult content warning” page was told Monday by Google to delete sexually explicit content, or find their blog removed from every form of access except registered users.

Until today, Google’s Blogger platform previously allowed “images or videos that contain nudity or sexual activity,” and stated that “Censoring this content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression.”

That changed on a whim Monday when Google ripped the rug out from under its previously-compliant Blogger users, who were told they’d be disappeared if Google decided their blogs contain “sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video.”

Over the last few years I’ve seen several LGBT blogs, horror movie blogs and art blogs get taken down by Blogger because of content despite Google’s policy stating that adult content was permissable. Some of these blogs were put back up with a splash page Content Warning imposed on them without their permission, while others were permanently shut down by Blogger. These experiences along with a poor interface and a hilariously rotten help system comprised of volunteers (including one guy who repeatedly harassed me off the boards and even tried to get SBBN shut down) made me leave Blogger for good.

Except for Technoknob, which I left on Blogger simply because there was nowhere else for the content but it wasn’t content I wanted to lose, either. Those posts may contain naughty, naughty photos of breasts, but they also are informative and historical and a lot of work went into them.

So here’s what’s going to happen: several old Technoknob posts are moving over to SBBN’s archives. SBBN’s long-standing “PG-13 content” policy is changing as of now. There won’t be scads of nudes or pornographic .gifs or anything like that, but consider SBBN to become potentially R-rated at any moment. Again, this content will be nothing more than what I would consider cheesecake pictures, mostly actors and actresses; for instance, a Diana Dors nude photo, the Tura Satana photos I mentioned above, Ziegfeld nude portraits by Alfred Cheney Johnston, etc.

An NSFW warning in text will appear at the top of all the NSFW posts so it should help prevent you from scrolling if you don’t want to see the pictures.

These Technoknob posts will be imported to SBBN over the next few days and will retain their original 2009 through 2011 dates. I don’t know if subscribers or RSS readers will get these posts as though they were new, but if so, be warned that they might show up in your inbox.

Feel free to post questions if you have them. An actual blog update with news you can use will be coming in the next week or so, by the way.

3 comments

  1. Uh-oh. Would my nude photo of William Shatner make the cut?

    (Oh, if only I HAD a nude photo of William Shatner…)

    I wonder if it’s time for me to move on too…
    Blogger has been bugging me for quite a while… I had noticed a warning page on a GLBT blog too, saying someone had complained to Blogger about the content. It was just some guy who raises chickens and married his man.

    1. I believe the closest to a nude photo of Shatner would be a screen grab from the sex scene in BIG BAD MAMA. I about fell over when I saw that. You don’t see everything but holy cow.

      Blogger has a habit of considering all LGBT content to be “adult.” It’s pretty offensive. I think Arbogast’s horror blog got a warning on it because he screencapped a movie that had brief nudity. It’s all pretty ridiculous, but I think Google has been trying to get rid of blogs for a while and this might just be part of the plan.

      1. Ohgod, I would almost be too embarrassed to post something from that BBM scene… :) But maybe… just to thumb my nose at Google.

        Funny, I too wondered if this was part of a plan to drive away bloggers. If so, it’s working on this blogger. I’m looking into WordPress and other platform. I’m sad though, having blogged on Blogger since 2003. But they’ve been pretty crappy since Google bought them.

        Anyway, thanks for your heads-up (and your good work).

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