Can Blogspot Stand Against Censorship?

After all these years of Blogspot being a wholesome and user-friendly platform...I find it disturbing that Blogspot even needed to publish the "Content Policy" statement below. 

We all signed similar contracts. Similar, not identical. Possibly because the one I signed was displayed on a public access computer located in a library frequented by small children, it DID specifically ban "adult content," and I've actually enjoyed interpreting that ban in a very strict way. This web site did review a book with the title Wheat B*y and refer to a traditional song inviting campers to stretch and touch their "head, shoulders, k*s and t*s," but generally, if we say "hand" we need to say "writing" or "crafts" or some such thing! 

Which made it just slightly embarrassing when a relative peeked over my shoulder and found "me, of all people" looking at one of Joe Jackson's tweaked cartoons...a particularly bad one in which Sabrina the Teenaged Witch appeared as a grown-up prostitute. (This web site does not generally specify the level of sex work in which a person is engaged, but this cartoon was pretty specific.) I was surprised he'd posted that, surprised Blogspot had hosted it, and mortified that, of all the good content that's come out of Lady Lake on Blogspot, that had to be the relative's introduction to that site. 

But generally Blogspot blogs have tended to be wholesome. If anything this platform tends to appeal to people whose blogs are SO wholesome they have nothing to say. They set out to chronicle a more or less normal, only more wholesome, life and there's nothing to chronicle. It takes a special talent to make "We did housework; we did yardwork; we did schoolwork; we went to a prayer meeting" into a blog worth reading! No wonder so many blogs devolve into commentaries on the TV news...or just fade out as even the blogger gets bored with them.

So who is actually the target of these warnings? There's some very subjective language in this "policy statement." We as a nation might benefit from an overall law, maybe a constitutional amendment, to the effect that if a rule contains subjective language it can't be enforced. 

"Content that depicts or encourages illegal activities" is a good clear rule. A person might reasonably believe that licensing younger drivers, for example, should not have been made illegal and that it's possible to teach twelve-year-olds who are tall enough to reach the controls to handle a motor vehicle responsibly, and might say that, but Blogspot could reasonably require the person to stick to arguments in favor of lowering the age requirement and NOT post content that encourages twelve-year-olds to take Daddy's car out on the road today. 

"Demonstrably false information about voting procedures" is a kind of content that might reasonably be considered harmful. (They haven't even thought of "demonstrably false information about shopping procedures"--an old comedy cliche used to be having a character advertise a huge sale at the competitor's store so that shoppers would be indignant to find that all prices had not been slashed by 90%.) This web site thinks that kind of content can be funny, but Blogspot can reasonably ask bloggers to make sure readers can tell when any examples of it we post are meant to be funny. Someone really did spend the money to spam voters in my neighborhood with cards indicating that we were going to have to vote in different precincts. A comment on that incident, here, suggested that all votes for the candidate this web site opposed should be cast into a local body of water, but I think it was obvious that that was a joke. This is Virginia. We're not as easily confused about these things as voters in big blue cities appear to be.

"Misleading content related to harmful conspiracy theories" might (beneficially) be applied to all those "Trump is Hitler, Trump is a child molester, Trump is anything and everything that needs killing" memes spewing out of the Loony Left, especially as this category of contract violation has been (very beneficially) defined as content that has promoted violent attacks. (If you're determined to shoot President Lincoln, you should at least have to base that decision on verifiable facts about what he's doing, e.g., the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War, rather than on misleading content insinuating that President Lincoln was going to require all buggies, covered wagons, and stagecoaches to be redesigned to fit people who are 6'4".) So in theory we're in favor of that ban. But it would be good to have some clarification of how the burden of proof would be on anyone calling for censorship to show how a conspiracy theory led to a violent attack. We don't want web sites trying to get proactive with this kind of thing, whining that every accusation of fraud and corruption, which may or may not be verifiable if it gets the investigation the accuser is calling for, amounts to a "harmful conspiracy theory." Any suggestion that blog posts be censored needs to be required to demonstrate exactly what innocent person has been, not "could be," harmed.

Blogspot site management can see exactly what I'm talking about: A reader of this web site has barraged me with evidence in support of a claim person wants me to investigate. I am in no way qualified to investigate the claim. I don't know who the person is, why the person has sent these messages to me, or to how many other people the person has sent the same messages. I've asked other bloggers and podcasters if they wanted to investigate the story; they've not wanted to. I'm convinced that the claims merit investigation by the government of California. Person may sincerely believe that person's opponent's lawyer is implicated in human trafficking and whatever else. The lawyer may be implicated in all that the person suspects, and more. Being a blogger, not a hosting site, I believe I have a right and even a duty not to publicize the person's claims; I don't have the time or money to find out enough about the claims to take a side. But I believe Blogspot has a duty, if the person has per own Blogspot, to host the person's attempt to publicize per own claims. The only justification for censoring a blog in which this person made these claims would be that the claims had been investigated and proven false. As long as they're part of the person's ongoing lawsuit, a publishing site that paid for content might reject them, but a hosting site that merely displays whatever people choose to post has no right to reject them.

And "misleading content related to harmful health practices"? Mercy. Doctors can't agree, nor have they agreed from year to year, on what is a harmful health practice. At least, there might be some agreement on a few practices that are immediately fatal, like going over Niagara Falls without even a barrel or chugging a jug of Clorox, but there's no history of agreement on practices that anyone finds interesting to discuss, like medications, vaccinations, food, drink, or exercise. Name a health practice; somewhere the uncensored historical data will turn up somebody who's claimed that it's harmful. 

Right. We need a law that any ban on "misleading content related to harmful health practices" is unenforceable. Such a non-starter as to discredit any publisher or web site that even leaves blather about it in any statement of policy. For people now alive, this phrase suggests that Google might have compromised itself by promoting what are now known to have been the very harmful mRNA vaccines that were mostly available against the strain of COVID people had already had, anyway, so there was high risk and no benefit associated with them all along, and for that reason the corporations bellowed and brayed that any skepticism about these vaccines was what was "harmful." Let's just say that we as a nation need to make a strong commitment to respecting people's right to their opinions, such that those who promoted experimental vaccines when anyone who had read any medical science whatsoever knew that those vaccines would be useless can be considered as merely having overreacted to COVID panic and are not subject to fines, prison terms, or shooting, now.

"Harmful health practices." There are those who don't like it that so many older Americans are active, fit, and healthy. There are those who think our good health harms them. Google would be well advised just to withdraw this whole paragraph from their policy, before somebody sues Blogspot for being a site where so many active senior citizens have encouraged and helped one another to stay healthy.

And it would be helpful, since European regulations are mentioned, if Blogspot's content policy affirmed that this is an AMERICAN site and upholds AMERICAN standards of freedom of speech. If content here upsets people in foreign countries, they probably needed and deserved to be upset--in every way--and their sole recourse should be to stay off the AMERICAN-originated Internet. 

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Blogger Content Policy

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Blogger is a service for self-expression and communication. We believe Blogger increases the availability of information, encourages healthy debate, and makes possible new connections between people. It is our belief that censoring this content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression.

However, 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.

We rely on blog readers to report content that they find inconsistent with Blogger's Community Guidelines. If you encounter a post that you believe violates Community Guidelines, please report it using the 'Report' link located in the navigation of most blogs. If you are unable to find the link on the blog, you can still report suspected violations here.

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