For many years this site has been hosted on a server sitting in my dwelling. I did this in part for educational purposes, hosting your own site does teach you a lot about server administration. The other reason I did this was so I could be free of any third-party’s terms of use agreement. While many hosts; including my original one, WordPress.com; have very permissive use agreements those agreements are subject to change. Google just announced a major change to its use agreement that will leave some blogs reeling:
TORONTO — Google is cracking down on adult content posted to its popular Blogger service.
The company started notifying users on Monday that they have until March 23 to delete “images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity.”
Google said it will not delete existing blogs that haven’t been purged of explicit content by March 23 but warned it will set them to “private” — meaning only the user and people with whom he/she has directly shared the blog will be able to view it.
I don’t host any adult content on my site but I do discuss firearms, anarchism, and other subjects that can be unpopular with many companies. It isn’t impossible to imagine a host decided it doesn’t want to allow anybody to use its service to discuss weapons or how terrible statism is. But since I host this site on my own server I don’t have to worry about such bullshit!