Blogger Flag Button = Censorship?

Recently Blogger has made some changes to it's service. One change which you may of noticed is the addition of what is called the "Flag button". It is located in the upper right hand corner of your blog's navbar. Some people are a little confused as to what exactly this button does and what purpose it serves. I want to take a minute and clear up any confusion, especially to those that are worried that this flag button is some form of speech censorship put into place by Blogger. In fact it is not a form of censorship. The idea of it is to be used as a tool by everyone to flag objectionable content. Now that simple purpose statement there is a little gray, so I am going to attempt to explain what exactly that means.

Have you ever found yourself clicking the "Next Blog button" over and over again only to come across a blog that wasn't exactly to your taste? Maybe it was politically incorrect, potential hurtful or just plain gross? Well, one person's vulgarity is another's poetry...or something like that. When it comes to judging which is which, things can get a little tricky. That is why Blogger has launched a new feature on the Blogger navbar called "Flag As Objectionable". This feature allows the blogging community as a whole to identify content they deem objectionable. In turn, Blogger will take action when needed. Now I know none of you would flag my great blog! Right? You better be nodding in agreement.

For more information on how this feature works, read What is the "Flag" button? (Note: a blog has to be republished in order for this new button to show up in the navbar.)

***UPDATE***
Blogger has also made 2 other recent changes that I should mention. They have added a free plug-in for Microsoft Word that works with Blogger. It's called "Blogger for Word". You can work in Word like you normally do and then save your document as a post to your blog. Once you install the plug-in and restart Word, some buttons will appear. These buttons allow you to publish, edit and save as draft from within Word. The second change Blogger has made is the option to require word verification for comments. This option (off by default) gives bloggers a tool to help prevent the automatic creation of comments by spammers.