SEARCH GIANT’S GOOGLE Ads BAN ZeroHedge BUT REVERSES DECISION ON FEDERALIST OVER RACIST CONTENT
The search giant’s Google Ads ban ZeroHedge from its platform for publishing content as regards the ongoing protests against police brutality that violates Google’s rules around content that promotes hatred. While on the other hand, the company reversed plans to ban The Federalist after the site removed comments from its contents.
According to reports emerging from NBC News, which clearly spelled Google determination that both The Federalist and right-wing website ZeroHedge violated its Ads policy against monetizing content that “promotes hatred, intolerance, violence or discrimination based on race”.
Responding to NBC reports, Google’s spokesperson made it clear that “when a page or site violates our policies, we take action. In this case, we’ve removed both sites’ ability to monetize with Google”. And also added that “we have strict publisher policies that govern the content Ads can run on and explicitly prohibit derogatory content that promotes hatred, intolerance, violence or discrimination based on race from monetizing”.
As Google Ads ban remains in place for ZeroHedge, while in another dimension, the company made a sudden change over reverse ban on The Federalist, though it claims The Federalist wasn’t formally banned yet. Instead, the site was blocked due to endemic racist commenters across their articles. Google made it clear ZeroHedge was warned the previous week but failed to address the issue.
The reports over the change followed reports from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which called out a number of companies for hosting ads on sites promoting unsubstantiated or false claims about current Black Lives Matter protests. It specifically cited a ZeroHedge article calling Black Lives Matter “practically a revolutionary operative of the CIA via [George] Soros”, in addition to a Federalist story blaming violence and looting at protests on “left-wing anarchists and Antifa groups”. The latter has previously been criticized after organizing posts with the tag “black crime” and promoting “chickenpox parties” for catching COVID-19.
To ascertain the state of the Federalist, Google stated, “to be clear, The Federalist is not currently demonetized. We do have strict publisher policies that govern the content ads can run on, which includes comments on the site. This is a longstanding policy”.
The search and Android giant, Google as well as other large tech companies have publicly committed to funding racial justice programs in wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis. In the same vein, has it launched an initiative to “amplify” the voice of black creators on YouTube.
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