https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-bans-two-websites-its-ad-platform-over-protest-articles-n1231176

nbcnews.com

Google bans two websites from its ad platform over protest articles

Adele-Momoko FraserAdele-Momoko Fraser is a producer with the NBC News Verification Unit.

4-5 minutes

Google has banned two far-right websites from its advertising platform after research revealed the tech giant was profiting from articles pushing unsubstantiated claims about the Black Lives Matter protests.

The two sites, ZeroHedge and The Federalist, will no longer be able to generate revenue from any advertisements served by Google Ads.

A Google spokesperson said in an email that it took action after determining the websites violated its policies on content related to race.

“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," the spokesperson wrote. "When a page or site violates our policies, we take action. In this case, we’ve removed both sites’ ability to monetize with Google.”

Google's ban of the websites comes after the company was notified of research conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a British nonprofit that combats online hate and misinformation. They found that 10 U.S-based websites have published what they say are racist articles about the protests, and projected that the websites would make millions of dollars through Google Ads.

Google blocked The Federalist from its advertising platform after the NBC News Verification Unit brought the project to its attention. ZeroHedge had already been demonetized prior to NBC News’ enquiry, Google said. ZeroHedge and The Federalist did not respond to requests for comment.

Byers Market Newsletter

Get breaking news and insider analysis on the rapidly changing world of media and technology right to your inbox.

Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said it found advertisements for many companies that had otherwise made public statements supporting Black Lives Matter and the recent protests running on the websites.

“We found that lots of those companies are inadvertently funding through their advertising content that is outright racist in defense of white supremacism and contains conspiracy theories about George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement," he said.

Google has banned various websites from its advertising platform in recent years, mostly targeting fake news operations.

ZeroHedge and The Federalist have become well known in recent years for publishing far-right articles on a variety of subjects. On the recent protests, ZeroHedge published an article claiming that protests were fake, while The Federalist published an article claiming the media had been lying about looting and violence during the protests, which were both included in the report sent to Google.

As the Black Lives Matter protests unfolded over recent weeks, hundreds of corporations eagerly lent their support. This includes Google, which said it has donated “$12 million in funding to organizations working to address racial inequities.”

There are other similar websites that continue to generate revenue through Google, causing continued concern for civil rights advocates. In its report, the Center for Countering Digital Hate pointed to examples of articles on other far-right websites such that carried advertisements by well-known brands while disseminating false narratives about the protest movement.

The issue also poses significant risks for brand security.

Caroline McCarthy, vice president of communications and content at TrueX, a digital advertising company, said companies need to hold Google and other digital advertising companies responsible for where their ads run.

“The reality is that they [brands] have to start by asking questions,” McCarthy said “They have to say, what is my brand content going to be running against? And if the other person on the other side of the conversation can’t give them a straight answer, then that’s a problem.”

“The pressure on the tech companies is only going to come from dollars actually, literally getting pulled,” she said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40429506)

https://twitter.com/ScottNover/status/1272982917753573376

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40430782)

The organisation campaigns for internet censorship to be enacted against rival political actors, lobbying American "big tech" firms such as YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram and Apple to "deplatform" individuals so that they cannot present their views to the general public. The CCDH's most high-profile political censorship campaign so far has been against prominent British conspiracy theorist David Icke. Other targets of CCDH campaigns have included the left-wing politician and broadcaster George Galloway and the right-wing media personality Katie Hopkins. "

Surely Imran Ahmed of the United Kingdom shares our core, uniquely American value of free speech

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40429545)

"The Federalist published an article claiming the media had been lying about looting and violence during the protests, which were both included in the report sent to Google."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40429676)

And both of them are much, much better than Breitbart.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40429730)

If you are an Alabama fan, is Cam Newton better than Tua?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40429744)

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/03/the-media-are-lying-to-you-about-everything-including-the-riots/

thefederalist.com

The Media Are Lying To You About Everything, Including The Riots

John Daniel Davidson

7-9 minutes

It seems no great event or upheaval in our national life can pass now without the media lying to our faces about it.

They lied about the Trump campaign colluding with Russia in 2016. They lied about the Mueller probe and Brett Kavanaugh and former national security adviser Mike Flynn. They lied about Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president and the impeachment farce that ensued. They lied about the coronavirus and the lockdowns and the White House response. And now they’re lying about the riots.

In recent days we’ve heard a steady drumbeat of lies, distortions, and disingenuousness from the mainstream media about almost every aspect of the unrest now gripping American cities. The deceit is almost too pervasive and amorphous to describe, but I’m going to try anyway.

Over the weekend we were told, for example, that the looting and violence was being instigated not by left-wing anarchists and antifa groups but by the media’s favorite villains: white supremacists. CNN, whose Atlanta offices were vandalized Friday, went on and on—without a shred of evidence to back it up—about how white supremacists might be infiltrating the protests and stirring up trouble. The New York Times, in a report that even quoted a senior police official in New York City saying outside anarchist groups were coordinating mayhem before the protests began, nevertheless veered into a long aside about how far-right “accelerationists” were hoping the unrest would bring about a long-sought second civil war.

By Monday, no one was talking about the white supremacist agitators anymore. The media had moved on to better, more plausible lies.

Here’s Matthew Yglesias of Vox, disingenuously comparing the rioters and looters to pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. His snarky tweet is meant to suggest Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton is a hypocrite for supporting the Hong Kong protesters but calling for the restoration of order at home.

Tom Cotton’s plans vs 2020 pic.twitter.com/kXB0aMQpb1

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) June 1, 2020

No one should have to point out to Yglesias—or anyone else with a large media platform—that the looters of Minneapolis and the rioters in Philadelphia have nothing in common with the people fighting against an actual communist dictatorship in Hong Kong. Yet here we are.

This kind of disconnect—what can only be described, at best, as a willful misunderstanding of reality—has been disturbingly commonplace among media pundits and reporters since all this began.

Here’s NBC News’s Carl Quintanilla doing the same thing, comparing Trump’s positive comments about the peaceful protests of draconian coronavirus lockdown orders in Michigan on May 1 to his comments on Monday to state governors that they need to make arrests and restore order.

Again, it should go without saying that the Michigan protests last month went off without any looting, rioting, or violence. No one was arrested because no one broke the law. There’s no valid comparison between those Michigan protests and the mass riots over the weekend. Surely Quintanilla knows this, which makes his commentary not just idiotic but deeply dishonest. He doesn’t care about accuracy and genuine insight, he cares about plaudits from woke Twitter—and he got them.

At every turn we see different iterations of media dishonesty. PBS Newshour’s White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor on Sunday complained that Trump had called the rioters anarchists “without providing any evidence.”

Had she opened her eyes, Alcindor might have seen the same evidence Trump and everyone else saw: news footage and cell phone videos circulating on social media of black-clad rioters burning and looting shops, attacking shop owners and motorists, and in some cases spray-painting actual anarchist symbols on public property.

Of course, Alcindor knows full well what the president meant by calling the rioters anarchists. She knows that many of them are indeed anarchists and left-wing provocateurs. We all know it. As mentioned above, the New York Times even reported on it.

Alcindor’s posture here is part of a broader pattern of opposition to Trump that the media has maintained for years, that whatever might be happening in the country, whether a global pandemic or mass rioting, the most important part of the story is always that Trump is behaving badly—that he’s lying, misleading, undermining democratic norms, tweeting mean things, whatever. Nothing, not even nationwide riots, are more important than pushing that narrative.

You see the media’s obsession with this narrative everywhere, no matter what the actual facts of a story might be. In Columbia, South Carolina, a man trying to protect his business was attacked and beaten senseless by an angry mob because he dared to call the cops. Yet Maggie Haberman of the New York Times thinks the big takeaway is that the man was described as “white” in a video of the attack that Trump posted about.

After Trump’s Monday night walk through Lafayette Park to St. John’s Episcopal Church, the media breathlessly reported stories about violent Park Police clearing peaceful protestors with tear gas. After nearly 24 hours of endless tweets, articles, and cable news stories claiming protestors were tear-gassed for Trump’s “photo op,” the Park Police information officer disproved all prior reports confirming, “No tear gas was used by USPP officers or other assisting law enforcement partners.”

The Media Are Playing A Dangerous Game

One could go on and on with examples like this. Get on Twitter right now and you’re bound to find fresh examples posting every hour as reporters and pundits lie about events that are unfolding in real time.

Every once in a while, you get a pundit who’s so bad at lying, so unconvincing in his role as a serious newsman, the mask slips. Often, that pundit is CNN’s Don Lemon, a not-very-bright man with a penchant for letting his mask slip—like when he lost it on-air laughing at a stupid joke about how Trump supporters are ignorant rubes.

On Sunday, as American cities were burning and looters were rampaging through the streets, Lemon implored America, “Open your eyes. We are teetering on a dictatorship.” He didn’t mean a dictatorship of the mob, which would have actually made sense given the facts. No, for Lemon and his CNN colleagues the real threat is Trump, who had the audacity to declare that if mayors and governors couldn’t get their cities under control, he would.

“Is the president declaring war on America? What is happening here?” asked Lemon, later declaring that Trump is “playing a very dangerous game, because this will backfire.”

To answer Lemon’s question, what’s happening here is the same thing that’s been happening for years now: the media, not Trump, have declared war on America, they are indeed playing a dangerous game, and it will most certainly backfire.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40429959)

Jfc was xo right all these years wtf

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40430220)

I'll leave the sycophantic party worship to you and your kind :-)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40432743)

Avowed shitlib here but I don't like this move.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40430273)

when did they do this?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40430709)

Separately, when combined with the Section 230 immunity and their power, they have arguably become akin to public utilities. Surely a utility company could not shut off power to conservatives. Not saying this is a rock solid argument, but it has been made. I'd say that if they aren't content neutral, they should not receive favorable status under 230. I think requiring neutrality in exchange for special status is socially beneficial.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40430289)

For the record, I think this whole thing is stupid.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40430443)

Federalist has not been banned yet can still remedy problem.

And the issue was the comments section?

https://twitter.com/scottnover/status/1272982917753573376?s=21

A Google spokesperson tells me that @NBCNews gets it wrong. Google says The Federalist was notified they *could* be demonetized but hasn't yet been. They can still remedy.

Google also says the sites' comments section not any articles were in violation.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40430312)

https://twitter.com/google_comms/status/1272997425821540352?s=21

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40430366)

Atleast this guy is kinda noticing Whatsup

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40432863)

As the biggest U.S. technology companies face increasing scrutiny from regulators related to privacy practices and market control, they’re spending a lot more money to try and influence lawmakers. No company in America is pouring more money into those efforts than Google.

Last year, the company spent $21.7 million on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. For two straight years, it’s been the top corporate spender, outranking traditional front-runners like Boeing and AT&T. Amazon and Facebook also reached record levels of lobbying expenditures in 2018.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40432879)

surely setting aside their stated principles/interests costs more than eight figures for the whole party

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40432897)

https://twitter.com/JordanSchachtel/status/1272971245642973185

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4562120&forum_id=2#40430342)