UPDATE: Google has performed a bizarre U-turn on this porn ban just 48 hours later. The tech giant said it had made the decision based on an overwhelming amount of feedback. Read the statement below.

"This week, we announced a change to Blogger’s porn policy. We've had a ton of feedback, in particular about the introduction of a retroactive change (some people have had accounts for 10+ years), but also about the negative impact on individuals who post sexually explicit content to express their identities.

So rather than implement this change, we’ve decided to step up enforcement around our existing policy prohibiting commercial porn. Blog owners should continue to mark any blogs containing sexually explicit content as "adult" so that they can be placed behind an "adult content" warning page.

Bloggers whose content is consistent with this and other policies do not need to make any changes to their blogs."

In the days before you could post slow-motion double penetration GIFs on Tumblr, there was really only one place to go to if you wanted to read about sex: Blogger. While LiveJournal hosted teenage diaries and gossip blogs, Blogger was where porn and kink-friendly sex writers like Zoe Margolis of Girl with a One Track Mind plied their craft. But now Google wants its blogging platform to clean up its act.

Bloggers have until 23 March to scrub their sites of pornography, a term which Google has also generously extended to include images or video that are "sexually explicit or show graphic nudity". No content will be deleted, but Google will make explicit blogs private if their owners do not comply with the ban. That means that only the administrators of these blogs and people invited to see it will be allowed to view them. 

Google will allow nudity but only "if the content offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts". As much as we'd love to imagine a Google employee painstakingly combing through a Robert Mapplethorpe fan blog to determine the artistic or scientific value of his BDSM portraits, this probably won't happen. Expect this blanket ban to be as indiscriminate as it sounds. 

In the past, Google allowed adult material so long as users marked their blogs as "adult". Their Blogger sites would then be placed behind a warning page which alerted visitors that the blog contained explicit content. 

Technologist and blogger Lauren Weinstein wrote: "Google is clearly within its rights to do this. I am however disappointed that no explanation at all -- zip -- is provided in this announcement explaining the rationale for this sudden change of policy on very short notice."

If you're on Blogger and want to move, you can either export your blog as an .XML file or download a copy of its archive with Google Takeout. 

Liked this? Check out more stories on porn and sex below:

Pornhub has drawn a world map showing who comes quickest

Fisting, facesitting and spanking: what else would you ban?

Stoya: Porn performer or prima ballerina? They aren't so different