We have heard a few rumors this week about Blogger getting ready to do a mass removal of adult themed blogs, including spanking related blogs. We’ve heard this before and it’s not happened. Still though, if you do have a Blogger blog it is ~always~ a good idea to back your blog up outside of Blogger. It is entirely possible to wake up one morning and find your entire blog GONE. It recently happened to Richard Windsor and it has certainly happened to others. So, protect yourself and your work.

Another thing you can do to protect your Blogger blog is to dump the navigation toolbar at the top of Blogger blogs… that’s the thing that allows readers to search key words, follow and so on. While some of those tools can be somewhat helpful, they are redundant and rarely used. Biggest of all though, that navigation toolbar allows readers to ~easily~ “Report Abuse” to Blogger.

While Blogger will tell you otherwise, our research leads us to strongly believe that Blogger uses reports of “abuse” as the basis for blogs they censor. Get enough “abuse” hits and your Blogger blog is slapped with a ‘warning page’… a larger number means your blog is made private… and even more means it is deleted entirely (in our opinion, this is what recently happened to Richard Windsor’s Spanking Universe Blogger blog).

This system has no human oversight either. It is all automated. Once Blogger has taken a step like deleting your blog, you can (in theory) get a human review. The process involved is extremely complex though and entirely frustrating. It’s also pointless. The Blogger Terms of Service is intentionally vague and quite easily can be used to justify removing a blog about spanking (despite Blogger’s claim that they allow “adult content”). So even if you go through all the steps, you’ll just find a human at the end of the line that stands by the automated decision to delete your blog (or force it to private status, etc).

There is no standard in how the “Report Abuse” button is used either. Anyone can click it for any reason.

It’s not something you need. Not that removing the option means your Blogger blog still can’t be removed. Blogger has ‘robots’ that crawl sites looking for violations and they can get you too (and the robots make mistakes all the time… but chances are you’re screwed if they nail you).

Dumping that toolbar is a good idea though. Increases your blog’s survival chances. It’s completely within the rules too. Blogger would prefer you not do it, but has no rule against it.

How do you delete the toolbar… it’s easy. You can go HERE and an exact step-by-step is offered, including an easy how-to video.