Warnings

nina recently wrote about the recent surge in Blogger blogs that have been recently "flagged,' resulting in one seeing a "content warning"page before one sees the actual blog in question.

Of course, these newly-flagged blogs all deal with some aspect or other of sex, to no one's surprise. In My comment on nina's entry I (jokingly, I think) suggested that some form of guerrilla action was called for -- I had the idea that we should organize an army of people to visit all sorts of "normal" Blogger blogs and flag them until they receive warning labels. Quilting? Badminton? Brazilian pop music? Flag 'em all. The theory being that the backlash would result in the end of the warning label system as Blogger got inundated with hundreds of thousands of complaints.

Well, up the revolution and all that, but it's not practical.

What I see more and more (and what nina advocates in her post) is leaving Blogger for other alternatives.

Just today I went over to Stiletto Diaries and found that the lovely shasta had moved to her own domain. As I was updating My link list to take this change into account, I realized that
Blogger wants all the sex bloggers to go elsewhere.

Blogger wants blogs that are going to connect to AdSense and generate revenues. And since "adult" products even in this enlightened age reside mainly on the margins, the AdSense opportunities in that arena are much more limited than they are for more mainstream blogs. Plus, not having any sex blogs would free Blogger (now a unit of deep-pocketed Google) from any fingers pointing in their direction along the lines of "your sex blogs made my son a rapist" and the like. However remote that might be, corporations always seek the path of least resistance, especially in the perception-is-reality-and-then-some area of children and anything remotely sexual.

So My advice to Blogger sex bloggers is: Stay. If people want to read you, a content warning screen isn't going to stop them. Stay. Because they want you to go.

There is no revolution. There is just a long series of tiny "no's."