Issues?

Yes, I know, I'm a little bit late this week with my second post. I do have a good excuse, but as a supervisor thoughtfully opined the other day, "The truth makes a poor excuse." (yes, this was her actual retort when I told her the truth about why I didn't do something), so instead of uttering the truth, we'll simply continue to stumble along in willful ignorance while you think of a good lie to tell me in the comments that will pass for a good excuse for being late with a post. The more outlandish, the more believable it will be.

Anyways, I was motoring through my day trying to think of something, anything actually, to blog about. I had a few thoughts swirling about, but nothing of any real consequence formed solidity. I thought about family, and the lack of everyone being in the same place at the same time, but then I thought, "Nah, who wants to read about me whining about my family? What's the fun in that?"

So, I hooked onto the next swirl, gambling. I figured since my post on smoking was a homerun (got two shares on Google+), I could write one on gambling. But alas, it wasn't meant to be. Whereas I put a little time, effort, and research into the smoking post (when a post takes me 1 1/2 hours to write, you can bet your sweet bippy that it's gonna be a winner), there was no way in H-E-Double-Toothpick that I was gonna put that kind of effort into a post being written on short notice.

Finally, I decided to try one last time to hook on another swirl: SEX.

The other day, I got this nifty little e-mail from Blogger which basically said this about that (links have been deactivated):

"Dear Blogger User,

We're writing to tell you about an upcoming change to the Blogger Content 
Policy that may affect your account.

In the coming weeks, we'll no longer allow blogs that contain sexually 
explicit or graphic nude images or video. We'll still allow nudity 
presented in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts, or 
where there are other substantial benefits to the public from not taking 
action on the content.

The new policy will go into effect on the 23rd of March 2015. After this 
policy goes into effect, Google will restrict access to any blog identified 
as being in violation of our revised policy. No content will be deleted, 
but only blog authors and those with whom they have expressly shared the 
blog will be able to see the content we've made private.

Our records indicate that your account may be affected by this policy 
change. Please refrain from creating new content that would violate this 
policy. Also, we ask that you make any necessary changes to your existing 
blog to comply as soon as possible, so that you won't experience any 
interruptions in service. You may also choose to create an archive of your 
content via Google Takeout 
(https://www.google.com/settings/takeout/custom/blogger).

For more information, please read here 
(https://support.google.com/blogger?p=policy_update).

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team"

Now, as you can probably imagine, when Blogger rolls out something like this, people go over ripened bananas, and that is exactly what they did. If you peruse the Blogger Help Forum and check out the category "Something Is Broken", you will get a very good sampling on how distraught everyone is over this.

From what I've read in the forums from the various talking heads that have an in with Blogger, this is not exactly set in concrete. They are collecting as many questions about what is acceptable and not acceptable under the new guidelines, including one from yours truly about this particular video.

For what it's worth, while I'm not overly thrilled about the potential for censorship, at least they're giving bloggers a month's notice about it. I would hate to see people get caught up in the maelstrom of what is a sensible move on the part of an Internet business. Granted, it may not seem that way to some, but wouldn't you want to deal with a business that applies their terms of service equally and consistently, as opposed to someone (i.e. Facebook, Instagram and Topix) who doesn't?

And for those of you who are wondering how I got the e-mail, I do have an adult blog called "It's Always Saturday In Suburbia", that was specifically created to avoid censorship/complaints about content on this blog.

(c) 2015 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.