More Anti-Adult Actions At Google

[nickbaer]

Adult webmasters have long lamented the short-end of the stick they (we) get from Google, from selective search keyword rankings.

A number of years ago, Google set out on a convoluted project to become the world's largest library of books. They started getting books, and scanning them, page by page. This enraged authors and publishers, and the issue of fair use stepped in, and Google was retrained a bit.

In 2011, I added all 400+ of my male nude photography eBooks to the Books dot Google dot com catalog. Because they have a sister site Play dot Google dot com, which sells eBooks for a nominal rate.

At that time, they required that 20% of the pages be made available for free preview. The false argument was that previews spurred sales. It's similar to the false argument of Tube sites that 60-minute free previews of a video spur sales of said video! Which most of us have known to be false since at last 2008 when it really started becoming a widespread concern, and more seem to be jumping on the bandwagon nowadays.

So I shut off my eBooks on Play dot Google dot come. In late 2012, I contacted them again to see if the ridiculous policy of 20% free views was still in effect. Actually, it had come to their minds that ANY free views of nudity, without age verification, was really, really bad, and since my eBooks were about nudes, MALE nudes, my eBooks fell into a new policy of 0% free view of pages with nude images!

With their help, all of my eBooks were restored and put back on sale. All was great until last week, when Google purged ALL NUDITY from both parts of their books site. Not just me, but all searches on nude photography turned up books that had been pulled.

More anti-Adult actions, in the Obama era, where serious economic recovery occurred, in just a few years, following a horrible, and yet unaccounted for, economic recession.

What a great way to shoot western economies in the foot, than to censor popular products, because of nudity. That an all correspondence with Google is with one-word mid-East or Polynesian named call center drones.

It's times like these - with PayPal and Google - that we wish Chad wasn't busy.

[Bec]

I'm sorry to hear this ... we don't need Google being a morality filter.

[nickbaer]

Many webmasters have complained over the years about Google not giving them PR1 or 2 for a variety of reasons, but this is a very different situation, because play dot google dot com is a commercial sales channel, where Google itself sells the products to consumers.

Not only are they being a morality filter within their commercial sales channel, but then they also dominate Google Search Engine Results for books! So we purveyors of otherwise legal nudity are being squeezed two ways.

Another example of a very slim and vague Acceptable Use Policy Terms & Conditions. Over the years, whenever I have had a nude book removed from a mainstream sales channel, the enforcers of said skinny AUP always have one-word names from the mid-East, similar to those names we have come to know from "customer service" centers experiences in India, Pakistan, even a bit south in Malaysia.

I'm concerned how someone in another culture, religion, government can evaluate art and speech for American based companies.

[Bec]

the enforcers of said skinny AUP always have one-word names from the mid-East, similar to those names we have come to know from "customer service" centers experiences in India, Pakistan, even a bit south in Malaysia.

speaking of which ... have you ever tried to get support for a Tracfone?? Talk about frustration with a capital F.

[nickbaer]

Seriously, one reason why I abandoned my short-lived dalliance with Adobe Creative Cloud, was a couple of experiences with India/Pakistan-based e-mail and telephone support. And that was for billing, not for Tech!

Although some of the most abusive customer service people are in Phoenix, on the other end of the Cox Cable customer service number.

One of my Banks uses India (or just south in Malaysia). Just plain stupid at best, abusive in the long run. When I bought my new MacMini a month ago, I bought it over the phone from Apple, because the configuration I chose was not off-the-shelf at an Apple Store. The lady asked for my card info and ran the charge. Five minutes later, someone in India (Pakistan, Malaysia) from my Bank's "security" dept called, asking about the charge.. They didn't like the process, said it looked like fraud. I told them it was fine. They said no it wasn't, and that they had denied the charge, and couldn't reverse it!! After 5 minutes of me melting the earwax in the guy's ear, he "remembered" how to add a "marker" to my card, that a future charge from Apple would be just fine.

Five minutes later, Apple sent me a rather nice e-mail that my charge had not gone through, and to call. I did, and the end result was almost $200 in discounts and upgrades for the inconvenience, on a $1,300 sale, and a successful second try on the card.

One of many reasons why I like Apple products, is that the other end of 800-MY-APPLE is someone in the US!


I do own the PhotoShop App, but everything else Adobe does, that I use and need, free Apple Apps do better! I've been doing PhotoShop since the early-1990s, and what I do with it hasn't yet warranted a support call!

Free Apple iWork Pages = MSWord, Adobe InDesign.

Free Apple iWork Numbers = MS Excel. (Actually, I use free OpenOffice.)

Free Apple iWork Keynote = MS PowerPoint. (I only use it to extract images from PP projects of others.)

Adobe Premiere Pro = Apple FCPX ($299), free iMovie10 (much more like FCP than previous iMovie), Compressor ($50) (which actually works flawlessly, first time ever in almost 10 years).

DVD Studio Pro still works to author SD DVDs... getting ready to learn Toast 11 ($79 + $30? BD plugin) to author BluRay DVDs. Been using Toast for many years to convert AVCHD files to .mov for FCP 7, now FCPX handles that; and to simplify burning authored SD DVDs, although burning from Finder works with a little extra work.