[ Resending from blog due to some reports of truncated copies. ]
With Sudden Blogger Change, Google Drags Their Trust Problem Back into the
Spotlight
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001088.html
I'm not a big fan of porn. I'd be lying if I claimed to never glance
at it -- hell, I'm a human male, no excuses about that -- but explicit
materials tend not to be anywhere near the top of my personal Web
browsing catalogue.
It's undeniable though that due to its highly controversial and widely
variable definition, restrictions on "explicit" imagery in particular
have long been at the forefront of freedom of speech issues and
concerns, even among individual free speech advocates who may
personally detest such content.
The reason is pretty obvious -- how governments and corporations
handle these "edge" materials (that may often be viewed as "low
hanging fruit") can be harbingers of how they will deal with other
sensitive and controversial matters that fall into free speech realms,
including access to historical information already published (the
target of the EU's nightmarish "Right To Be Forgotten"), political
information and criticisms, and ... well, it's a long list.
Abrupt changes in such policies -- particularly when announced without
explanations -- tend to be particularly eyebrow-raising and of special
concern.
So it is with considerable puzzlement and consternation that I
yesterday saw Google's quite surprising announcement that they were
banning most explicit imagery from their very popular and
long-standing Blogger platform, and indeed with only 30 days notice
and without any explanation whatsoever for this dramatic reversal in
policy.
There are some limited and rather nebulous exceptions ("educational
value" and the like -- sure to be the subject of heated disagreement),
and users can download their existing sites to try move elsewhere, but
the overall sense of the change is clear enough. Google is trying to
kick such sites -- many of them essentially personal, alternative
lifestyle, non-commercial public "diaries" of long-standing and with
vast numbers of incoming links built up over many years -- out the
Google door as rapidly as possible.
And let there be no mistake about it -- this is a sudden, dramatic,
and virtually 180 degree change. Blogger has long explicitly
celebrated freedom of expression, with "adult content" sites including
an access warning splash page so nobody would be exposed to such
materials accidentally.
That Google is within its rights to change this policy in the manner
they have announced is totally true and utterly unassailable.
But the manner of their doing this drags back into focus longstanding
concerns about how Google treats its users in particular contexts,
particularly those users who might be considered to fall outside of
"mainstream" society in any number of ways.
Google has indeed made some very significant positive strides in this
area. Account recovery systems have been improved so that innocent
(but sometimes forgetful) users are less likely to be locked out of
their accounts and associated Google services. Google Takeout permits
users to download their data from a wide variety of Google services to
save locally or store elsewhere -- if they do this before the
associated Google account is closed. (However, the "who's data is this
anyway?" question still looms large in cases of forcible account
closures due to various kinds of Terms of Service violations, when
users may not be able to further access their data, even to download
it -- this is a very complex topic.)
Though this seems not to be widely realized, Google+ no longer
enforces "real name" requirements on users (only some completely
rational Terms of Service restrictions to avoid serious abuses), and
is now profile-friendly to users' own sexual orientations in a manner
that really should be emulated by firms across the Web.
But the old trust fears, some of them trumped up propaganda from
Google adversaries, others having at least some basis in fact -- about
Google making sudden, seemingly inexplicable changes in terms and
policies, altering or even rapidly deprecating services on which
significant non-majority user communities depend -- are being
reenergized seemingly as a sort of unforced error on Google's part.
And such errors can do real damage, both to users and Google. For most
of the public does not view Google as a set of disparate and
compartmentalized services, but rather as more of a unified whole, and
perceived negative experiences with one aspect of the firm can easily
drag down views of the firm overall, much to the delight of hardcore
Google haters, by the way. This is why even if you don't care one iota
about porn or other materials considered to be explicit, you should
still be concerned about this Google policy change.
I care about Google's users and Google itself -- a firm that has
accomplished amazing feats toward the betterment of the Internet and
larger world over the course of a handful of years. I don't want to
see those Google haters handed a gift package that can't help but
assist their cause and attacks.
We could get into a lengthy discussion comparing the Blogger policies
of long standing with those of YouTube, Google Ads, and the like, but
while interesting, such analysis here and now would not be
particularly relevant to the immediate situation at hand.
The bottom line is that a dramatic change of policy that negatively
affects users who have been following the rules to date, is deserving
of significant warning notice (not merely a month -- many of these
sites have been operating for many years, some perhaps even since
before Google's acquisition of Blogger in 2003). I would have
recommended (absent some difficult to postulate legal urgency forcing
a faster timeline) at least 90 days as an absolute minimum, ideally
far longer.
That would be putting your users first, especially when deploying a
policy change that will disrupt them greatly. And please, no excuses
that "only a small percentage" of users would be affected. At Google
scale even tiny percentages can represent a whole bunch of live human
beings, and how you treat users who are easily marginalized can be
representative of broader attitudes in very significant ways.
And notably, I would have offered a simultaneous clear and honest
public explanation of why this total about-face on such a matter of
direct free expression concerns had been deemed necessary or otherwise
desirable. That's just common courtesy.
The world won't come to an end with this Blogger policy change by
Google. There will still be virtually limitless sources for porn and
other explicit imagery elsewhere, and most affected personal bloggers
will find other platforms and over time perhaps rebuild their
communities.
But the real story here isn't about sex or images or blogging at all.
It's about how to treat people with respect, even when a particular
group represents a small minority of total users, and even when they
express controversial views via explicit materials. It could be argued
that it's in these more contentious areas that treating users right is
especially important.
Given the information I have at hand right now regarding this abrupt
Blogger policy change and the circumstances surrounding it, I am very
disappointed in the way Google has handled the overall situation.
I say this because I feel that Google is a great company -- and I not
only believe that Google can do better with such matters -- I know
that they can.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
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