WARNING: Content may be objectionable

by Fran Eaton

Suppose you were to enter a website address from your home computer (versus a public computer) and you were met with a sign like this:

Content Warning:

Some readers of this blog have contacted Google because they believe this blog’s content is objectionable. In general, Google does not review nor do we endorse the content of this or any blog. For more information about our content politics, please visit the Blogger Terms of Service.

Then two options to click upon: “I understand and I want to continue” or “I do not wish to continue.”

What would you think? You’d think this is something you wouldn’t want to see, right? Google-owned Blogger has placed this sign before a Massachusetts-based website that raises concerns about promoting homosexual rights, called Mass Resistance.

For the most part, Google-owned Blogger’s content standards found HERE are pretty loose.

Blogger is a free service for communication, self-expression and freedom of speech. We believe Blogger increases the availability of information, encourages healthy debate, and makes possible new connections between people.

We respect our users’ ownership of and responsibility for the content they choose to share. It is our belief that censoring this content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression.

In order to uphold these values, we need to curb abuses that threaten our ability to provide this service and the freedom of expression it encourages. As a result, there are some boundaries on the type of content that can be hosted with Blogger. The boundaries we’ve defined are those that both comply with legal requirements and that serve to enhance the service as a whole.

But even Google has its limits of what it will allow to be published on its free Blogger service. It will censor some pornography and obscenity, as well as violent content and personal information disclosures.

It’s Googles’ limits of “hateful content” that Mass Resistance author Amy Contrada has run into while publishing a post entitled “GLAD: Perversion, Public Sex and Censorship.” The post was evidently too much for gay rights activists. They complained to Google about the post’s offensiveness, and the warning sign appeared, justified in Google’s minds that the Mass Resistance sign post deserves partial censorship because of Bloggers’ content guideline:

HATEFUL CONTENT: Users may not publish material that promotes hate toward groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity.

Amy writes:

So — now that this blog has made history as possibly the first to be semi-blocked by Google for “objectionable content” — what exactly is it that is so effective on this blog? First, we publish only facts, “uncomfortable truths,” not rumors or personal attacks. And obviously, our photos reveal the ugly truth. Then, we identify those public figures who are twisting the law to enable public perversion and subversion of our youth and culture.

The ‘offensive” post merely points out activities of the well-known radical homosexual activist group called “GLAD.” That’s hateful? Who determines what’s hateful?

While conservatives have been resisted by school boards and public libraries for years for filtering efforts to protect minors from illegal obscenity images on computers, simply exposing the sinister agenda of groups like GLAD are now considered censorable under the “hateful content” definition.

Hatefulness has new connotations in federal and state laws, especially when activities criticize sexual orientation. Thinking critically of lifestyles and speaking your mind either vocally or by written word against any lifestyle could be soon considered a federal crime, especially protecting homosexual, bi-sexual or transgender sexual behavior.

Google’s standards do not qualify as fair or discerning. They’re broad and questionably enforced. Just know that without public outcry, this new practice of squashing traditional moral views will spread and more and more, you’ll be seeing Google’s Content Warning, especially when scanning conservative websites that address moral issues like we do here on Smart Girl Nation and local conservative blogs such as Illinois Review.

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