[Following up on last December’s Flagged By Technorati Terms of Service, here’s the text of a message I submitted to their review link this afternoon. —fl]
When my blog started showing up as “flagged” I figured what the heck did I expect with a domain name like “real adult sex” anyway? I wrote a post saying it looked like I was dropped and decided to move on.
But since then other bloggers have approached me to say they don’t consider it appropriate that you would have pulled my blog which, despite the title is far more about the politics of gender, relationships, and sexuality than about sex itself. In other words the emphasis in virtually all of my posts is on the “real adult” part and not the “sex” part. My editorial position is best put in “Why I blog about sex instead of politics, the environment, health, money, or food.”
This is not just my opinion. Since you have the technology a quick review of other sites that while I am linked by a number of blogs with sexual content I’m also blogrolled by quite a few academic, political, feminist, gender-activist, reproductive-health and reproductive rights, sex-education, and first-amendment sites as well as at least one prominent news organization (the Huffington Post.)
At any rate, if you can’t do anything about it I guess that’s just life in the big city. But considering how many other non-flagged blogs have far more prurient information than mine, and far less political speech, I’d appreciate it if you’d reconsider my designation and reinstate my blog.
Thank you,
[real name and email redacted]
a.k.a. figleaf@realadultsex.com
Submitted by 2699 (not verified) on Sat, 2009-02-07 18:22.
It is pretty clear they looked at the title of the Blog and never actually read the thing to make this decision.
Submitted by 2699 (not verified) on Fri, 2009-02-06 14:28.
While some might shiver deliciously at the thought of sex bloggers ruthlessly violating helpless terms-of-service-agreements, the truth is neither sexy or obscene. The flagging that you, Tony Comstock and other bloggers receive seems to me to be a strategem used by a competitor to take you out of the running by canceling your blog's ability to appear in search results or dispense linky love. The strategem could be aptly named ob-whiney, i.e., file a complaint regarding a competing blog's allegedly obscene content to render them invisible.
Persuaded by their respective legal counsel, Technorati, Google, Blogger, etc. have decided that it is safer to play the role of Ceasar's wife and be above reproach by flagging any blog that contains graphic content. For these companies, it will be less costly from a public relations standpoint to ignore figleaf's complaints about unfair treatment rather than the complaints of the alleged "right-minded" viewers appalled by the sight of your naked penis.
Personally, fl, I am appalled -- by the size of the thicket generally known as your blogroll. Every time I click on your title page that thicket gets longer. Is it possible that I am the only reader who has noticed this flagrant textual display? And yes, I must confess that I have longed to get my hands on your thicket for sometime now.
So really, fl, we need to talk.
Submitted by 2699 (not verified) on Fri, 2009-02-06 18:44.
What, Kochanie, are you saying figleaf's prose is tumescent? :-)
Hey figleaf, please post a contact address for Technorati. I would like to complain to them too, and I bet I'm not the only one who'd write a letter of support. Really, there ought to be a flood of letters about this. There ought to be a letter-writing *campaign.* It's just outrageous.
Submitted by 2699 (not verified) on Sat, 2009-02-07 09:55.
Me, too. I've written to them more than once and they don't reply. That is, there are *supposed* addresses to write to them, but they don't seem to go anywhere.