Google Issues Ultimatum toConservative Website: Remove'Hateful' Article or Lose Ad Revenue
BY TYLER O'NEIL AUGUST 31, 2017 ! 1738 COMMENTS
Google
On Tuesday evening, Google sent a conservative website an ultimatum: remove one of your articles, or lose the ability to make ad revenue on your website. The website was strong-armed into removing the content, and then warned that the page was "just an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website."
"Yesterday morning, we received a very bizarre letter from Google issuing us an ultimatum," Shane Trejo, media relations director of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Michigan, wrote on The Liberty Conservative. "Either we were to remove a particular article or see all of our ad revenues choked off in an instant. This is the newest method that Big Brother is using to enforce thought control."
The ultimatum came in the form of an email from Google's ad placement service AdSense. The email specifically listed an article on The Liberty Conservative's site, stating that the article violated AdSense's policies.
BY TYLER O'NEIL AUGUST 31, 2017 ! 1738 COMMENTS
On Tuesday evening, Google sent a conservative website an ultimatum: remove one of your articles, or lose the ability to make ad revenue on your website. The website was strong-armed into removing the content, and then warned that the page was "just an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website."
"Yesterday morning, we received a very bizarre letter from Google issuing us an ultimatum," Shane Trejo, media relations director of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Michigan, wrote on The Liberty Conservative. "Either we were to remove a particular article or see all of our ad revenues choked off in an instant. This is the newest method that Big Brother is using to enforce thought control."
The ultimatum came in the form of an email from Google's ad placement service AdSense. The email specifically listed an article on The Liberty Conservative's site, stating that the article violated AdSense's policies.
"As stated in our program policies, Google ads may not be placed on pages that
contain content that: Threatens or advocates harm on oneself or others; Harasses,
intimidates or bullies an individual or group of individuals; Incites hatred against,
promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of
their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual
orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with
systemic discrimination or marginalization," the email stated.
The email warned The Liberty Conservative that it must either remove ads from that page, or "modify or remove the violating content to meet our AdSense policies."
"Please be aware that if additional violations are accrued, ad serving may be disabled to the website listed above," the AdSense email warned. "Please be aware that the URL above is just an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website or other sites that you own."
Trejo argued that the article Google specified "contained no offensive content." Rather, it "was merely distinguishing the many differences between the alt-right and literal Nazis."
The Liberty Conservative writer suggested that the article was singled out because it was written by former Liberty Conservative contributor James Allsup. Allsup was involved in the "Unite the Right" riot (which Trejo described as a "rally-turned-riot") in Charlottesville, Va. Trejo said the article was targeted because "it was authored by a man deemed to be an 'unperson' by the corporate elite.
"Due to financial constraints, we had to comply with Google's strong-arming tactics for the time being," Trejo admitted. "An independent publisher such as The Liberty Conservative needs revenue from the Google ad platform in order to survive."
Despite this necessary surrender, The Liberty Conservative writer remained optimistic. "We look forward to the day where rival ad platforms who respect the intellectual freedom of their customers can outcompete Google, but those days have not arrived yet," he wrote. "These tech companies have us all by the short hairs, and post-Charlottesville, they are all working in unison to enforce the
The email warned The Liberty Conservative that it must either remove ads from that page, or "modify or remove the violating content to meet our AdSense policies."
"Please be aware that if additional violations are accrued, ad serving may be disabled to the website listed above," the AdSense email warned. "Please be aware that the URL above is just an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website or other sites that you own."
Trejo argued that the article Google specified "contained no offensive content." Rather, it "was merely distinguishing the many differences between the alt-right and literal Nazis."
The Liberty Conservative writer suggested that the article was singled out because it was written by former Liberty Conservative contributor James Allsup. Allsup was involved in the "Unite the Right" riot (which Trejo described as a "rally-turned-riot") in Charlottesville, Va. Trejo said the article was targeted because "it was authored by a man deemed to be an 'unperson' by the corporate elite.
"Due to financial constraints, we had to comply with Google's strong-arming tactics for the time being," Trejo admitted. "An independent publisher such as The Liberty Conservative needs revenue from the Google ad platform in order to survive."
Despite this necessary surrender, The Liberty Conservative writer remained optimistic. "We look forward to the day where rival ad platforms who respect the intellectual freedom of their customers can outcompete Google, but those days have not arrived yet," he wrote. "These tech companies have us all by the short hairs, and post-Charlottesville, they are all working in unison to enforce the
Orwellian nightmare. Nobody is safe."
Chillingly, Trejo called on "all conservatives and libertarians" to "realize that the
Orwellian nightmare enforced by private hands is just as harmful to human
freedom as if the dystopia was enforced by the hands of government commissars.
The results will be the same, as freedom of expression will be sacrificed to the God
of political correctness."
This was not the first time The Liberty Conservative faced censorship, Trejo added. "In the past, Facebook banned users from sharing content immediately after they posted our controversial article criticizing a 'libertarian' Washington D.C. thinktank official who denigrated Ron Paul," he wrote. But this was the first time the site faced demonetization.
Earlier this week, The Washington Post reported that Google was targeting critics in academia and journalism. The company has come under fire for firing senior software engineer James Damore after he published a controversial memo inside the company. Ironically, he accused Google of being an "ideological echo chamber," and his dismissal arguably proved his point.
Following the riots in Charlottesville, one website in particular became notorious for its hateful attack on Heather Heyer, who died in the riots. Daily Stormer was a white supremacist, neo-Nazi website, and its article was genuinely hateful, so the web hosting company GoDaddy gave the site a 24-hour notice before removing the site from the Internet. Google later announced that it would cancel the domain registration, removing the possibility of Daily Stormer remaining on the Internet.
Daily Stormer was legitimately hateful, but its removal from the Internet can set off a slippery slope of Internet blacklisting, which has arguably already begun. Google's ultimatum to The Liberty Conservative may be the next step in that direction.
If Trejo is correct, and the article in question was targeted merely because of its author rather than for any particular "hatred"-inciting content, AdSense's threat violated its own policies — unless the very name of a Charlottesville rioter is to be considered "discriminatory" speech towards minorities.
Daily Stormer was disgusting, and because The Liberty Conservative article has been removed from the Internet, PJ Media could not ascertain whether it was legitimately offensive. But even if it was, these attacks set a dangerous precedent.
This was not the first time The Liberty Conservative faced censorship, Trejo added. "In the past, Facebook banned users from sharing content immediately after they posted our controversial article criticizing a 'libertarian' Washington D.C. thinktank official who denigrated Ron Paul," he wrote. But this was the first time the site faced demonetization.
Earlier this week, The Washington Post reported that Google was targeting critics in academia and journalism. The company has come under fire for firing senior software engineer James Damore after he published a controversial memo inside the company. Ironically, he accused Google of being an "ideological echo chamber," and his dismissal arguably proved his point.
Following the riots in Charlottesville, one website in particular became notorious for its hateful attack on Heather Heyer, who died in the riots. Daily Stormer was a white supremacist, neo-Nazi website, and its article was genuinely hateful, so the web hosting company GoDaddy gave the site a 24-hour notice before removing the site from the Internet. Google later announced that it would cancel the domain registration, removing the possibility of Daily Stormer remaining on the Internet.
Daily Stormer was legitimately hateful, but its removal from the Internet can set off a slippery slope of Internet blacklisting, which has arguably already begun. Google's ultimatum to The Liberty Conservative may be the next step in that direction.
If Trejo is correct, and the article in question was targeted merely because of its author rather than for any particular "hatred"-inciting content, AdSense's threat violated its own policies — unless the very name of a Charlottesville rioter is to be considered "discriminatory" speech towards minorities.
Daily Stormer was disgusting, and because The Liberty Conservative article has been removed from the Internet, PJ Media could not ascertain whether it was legitimately offensive. But even if it was, these attacks set a dangerous precedent.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a cash cow that uses its coffers to
slander mainstream conservative and Christian organizations as "hate groups." The
SPLC began by tracking real hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and black nationalist
groups, but later it added mainstream groups to its list.
The SPLC publishes a list of "hate groups" — along with a "hate map" — that
lists Christian organizations like D. James Kennedy Ministries, the Family Research Council (FRC), Liberty Counsel, the American Family Association (AFA), and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), along with other groups like the American College of Pediatricians and the Center for Immigration Studies. It also lists Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz as an "anti-Muslim extremist."
This matters because in the summer of 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins III broke into the FRC, aiming to murder everyone in the building. Corkins later pled guilty to committing an act of terrorism and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. During an FBI interrogation, the shooter said he targeted FRC because it was listed as an "anti-gay group" on the SPLC website.
The man who shot Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), James Hodgkinson, also "liked" the SPLC on Facebook, and the SPLC repeatedly attacked Scalise.
Since the events in Charlottesville, the SPLC has received wide support. George Clooney and his wife Amal pledged $1 million to the group, and J.P.
Morgan pledged $500,000. Apple CEO Tim Cook was even more generous, announcing his company would give $1 million to the SPLC, that it would match any donations from employees, and that it would set up a system in iTunes software to let consumers directly donate to the organization.
CNN broadcast the SPLC's "hate map" on its website and Twitter account this month (with the FRC still marked on the map). In June, the charity navigation website GuideStar adopted the SPLC "hate group" list, marking each profile of the targeted organizations as a "hate group." ABC and NBC parroted the SPLC's "hate group" label against Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) last month.
If Google is targeting websites with any connection to white supremacists, in order to take them off the Internet after Charlottesville, and Apple and CNN are partnering with the SPLC to tar mainstream conservative, Christian, and anti- Islamist groups as on par with the KKK, it is not a stretch to think that Google might start targeting mainstream sites next.
Should Google, Apple, and GoDaddy decide to "fight hate" by following the SPLC and abolishing all of its "hate groups" from the Internet, the Left would effectively silence the Right overnight.
The Liberty Conservative is not National Review, but it's not Daily Stormer, either.
Many turn to the words of Lutheran Minister Martin Niemöller, who warned in the time of the Holocaust, "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Socialist." Then they came for other groups, and he did not
The SPLC publishes a list of "hate groups" — along with a "hate map" — that
lists Christian organizations like D. James Kennedy Ministries, the Family Research Council (FRC), Liberty Counsel, the American Family Association (AFA), and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), along with other groups like the American College of Pediatricians and the Center for Immigration Studies. It also lists Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz as an "anti-Muslim extremist."
This matters because in the summer of 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins III broke into the FRC, aiming to murder everyone in the building. Corkins later pled guilty to committing an act of terrorism and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. During an FBI interrogation, the shooter said he targeted FRC because it was listed as an "anti-gay group" on the SPLC website.
The man who shot Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), James Hodgkinson, also "liked" the SPLC on Facebook, and the SPLC repeatedly attacked Scalise.
Since the events in Charlottesville, the SPLC has received wide support. George Clooney and his wife Amal pledged $1 million to the group, and J.P.
Morgan pledged $500,000. Apple CEO Tim Cook was even more generous, announcing his company would give $1 million to the SPLC, that it would match any donations from employees, and that it would set up a system in iTunes software to let consumers directly donate to the organization.
CNN broadcast the SPLC's "hate map" on its website and Twitter account this month (with the FRC still marked on the map). In June, the charity navigation website GuideStar adopted the SPLC "hate group" list, marking each profile of the targeted organizations as a "hate group." ABC and NBC parroted the SPLC's "hate group" label against Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) last month.
If Google is targeting websites with any connection to white supremacists, in order to take them off the Internet after Charlottesville, and Apple and CNN are partnering with the SPLC to tar mainstream conservative, Christian, and anti- Islamist groups as on par with the KKK, it is not a stretch to think that Google might start targeting mainstream sites next.
Should Google, Apple, and GoDaddy decide to "fight hate" by following the SPLC and abolishing all of its "hate groups" from the Internet, the Left would effectively silence the Right overnight.
The Liberty Conservative is not National Review, but it's not Daily Stormer, either.
Many turn to the words of Lutheran Minister Martin Niemöller, who warned in the time of the Holocaust, "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Socialist." Then they came for other groups, and he did not
speak out. But: "Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for
me."
Apple to Give Over $2M to Terror-Linked Group Which Compares Christians to the KKK
First they came for Daily Stormer. Then they came for The Liberty Conservative. Then they came for the Family Research Council. LGBT activists speak openly about "punishing the wicked," by which they mean anyone who refuses to take part in a same-sex wedding.
Internet blacklisting should scare any American who loves free speech. Every American should speak up about websites being removed from the Internet, because once tech companies start "fighting hate," it doesn't end with Daily Stormer or even The Liberty Conservative. The SPLC won't let it end there. Americans must speak up, or their views might be next on the blacklist.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/08/31/google-issues-ultimatum-to- conservative-website-remove-hateful-article-or-lose-ad-revenue/
Apple to Give Over $2M to Terror-Linked Group Which Compares Christians to the KKK
First they came for Daily Stormer. Then they came for The Liberty Conservative. Then they came for the Family Research Council. LGBT activists speak openly about "punishing the wicked," by which they mean anyone who refuses to take part in a same-sex wedding.
Internet blacklisting should scare any American who loves free speech. Every American should speak up about websites being removed from the Internet, because once tech companies start "fighting hate," it doesn't end with Daily Stormer or even The Liberty Conservative. The SPLC won't let it end there. Americans must speak up, or their views might be next on the blacklist.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/08/31/google-issues-ultimatum-to- conservative-website-remove-hateful-article-or-lose-ad-revenue/
After a sustained assault from lawmakers, investigators and victims groups, the website Backpage.com agreed early this year to shut down its lucrative adult page, which had become a well-known sex-trafficking hub.
It wasn’t long before the company was back in the headlines.
The adult section was gone, but the sex traffic was not. In May, authorities in Stockton charged 23 people with involvement in a trafficking ring that was using another corner of Backpage to market sex with girls as young as 14. A Chicago teenager allegedly trafficked on Backpage had her throat slit in June.
The resilience of this platform — host to an estimated 70% of online sex trafficking at its peak — is a long-running public relations mess for the tech industry. Internet freedom laws held sacred in Silicon Valley have helped shield Backpage from prosecution and lawsuits by victims of gruesome sex trafficking.
Now the tech industry’s Backpage problem has evolved into a full-blown political crisis. An unexpectedly large coalition of lawmakers is aiming to hold sites like Backpage liable for trafficking, sparking panic in Silicon Valley over the far-reaching consequences for the broader Internet.
The noisy political battle is forging unusual alliances in Washington. And caught in the middle are some of the most influential lawmakers in California.They find themselves struggling to reconcile a sex trafficking scourge that has hit their state hard with a remedy that Silicon Valley cautions would be a disaster for a free and open Internet.
Trade groups representing Google, Facebook and other Internet giants warn of a “devastating impact” on the tech industry if the 1996 Communications Decency Act is tinkered with in the way lawmakers envision to hold Backpage and others liable for criminal material on their pages.
They project “mass removals of legitimate content” by social media and other firms scrambling to shield themselves from a deluge of lawsuits from trial lawyers and prosecutors. The ACLU joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups in warning lawmakers that if they pass the law, every one of the millions of social media postings placed online daily becomes a potential liability for the company hosting it.
But much of Congress is unimpressed by the predictions of calamity.
The lawmakers have grown impatient with Silicon Valley’s limited success at self-policing, and its flat-out refusal to consider modifications to its cherished immunity from the illegal behavior of posters, as enshrined by the two-decade-old act.
Judges keep returning to that immunity in dismissing claims against Backpage, sometimes in the face of what they acknowledge may be compelling evidence that the firm condoned trafficking.
“The Communications Decency Act is a well-intentioned law, but it was never intended to protect sex traffickers,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).
More than a quarter of lawmakers in Congress have already signed on as sponsors of the nascent bill Portman is taking a lead on that would change the act, or to a similar measure in the House. It is a formidable show of bipartisan support that is jolting tech companies. The momentum grew in August, when a Sacramento judge threw out state criminal pimping charges against Backpage, citing the immunity from such prosecution the company receives under the act.
California prosecutors had built much of their case around allegations that Backpage helped traffickers and pimps edit their ads to evade law enforcement. “Until Congress sees fit to amend the immunity law, the broad reach … of the Communications Decency Act even applies to those alleged to support the exploitation of others by human trafficking,” wrote Superior Court Judge Lawrence Brown.
The judge is allowing prosecutors to proceed with money-laundering charges against Backpage, which is accused of illegally using shell companies to trick credit card firms refusing to do business with Backpage into processing the payments of its customers.
The company denied helping to craft any of the sex trafficking ads that landed on its site. It is fighting the money-laundering charges. Company officials declined to comment on the congressional effort it has inspired, directing a reporter instead to the opposition campaign mounted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology — groups that receive substantial funding from big technology companies.
Almost every attorney general in the country wants the decency act changed to strip legal immunity for sites that condone or promote trafficking. Fifty of them wrote a letter to Congress a few weeks ago citing several horrific cases in which Backpage was used to traffic teenage girls. They warned the act has “resulted in companies like Backpage.com remaining outside the reach of state and local law enforcement in these kinds of cases.”
California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said the site would have been shut down long ago if not for the immunity. “We would have been able to stop the abuse and in some cases the death of some of these young people who got caught up in these sex trafficking rings,” Becerra said.
Missing from the long list of sponsors of Portman’s bill is California Sen. Kamala Harris, who aggressively went after Backpage while serving as the state’s attorney general, and in 2013 joined colleagues in other states in signing a letter with the same demand state attorneys general sent Congress this week.
The hesitance of Harris and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein to sign on reflects how cautiously lawmakers close to Silicon Valley are treading.
The indictment Harris filed against Backpage last year was a memorable career moment, with a three-year investigation leading to the arrest of the company chief executive as he returned from a trip abroad, and a large raid on corporate headquarters in Dallas. But stripping immunity under Internet law from companies like Backpage is complicated business that could have unexpected fallout. Harris still wants the decency act changed, but appears unpersuaded that the Portman plan is targeted enough.
Other California lawmakers are also uneasy about it. Only a smattering of the state’s immense delegation has signed on to the House measure.
Among those opposing it is Rep. Ro Khanna, the former Stanford University economist now representing Silicon Valley in Congress. He is loathe to tinker with what he says is a pillar of the Internet economy. The protection online companies are given against illegal material that users lob on their platforms was foundational to the explosive growth of the industry, he said.
“It is a reason America dominates tech instead of Europe or China, where such immunity doesn’t exist,” Khanna said. He said he feared even a narrowly targeted tweak could be exploited by lawyers and activists to attack a broad range of Internet content they find objectionable.
Opponents also warn that stripping the immunity may merely force Web companies to less aggressively police their content, because knowing what illegal material is on their sites could increase liability under the proposed changes to the act. They say companies should instead be pressured to step up their enforcement efforts and innovation of anti-trafficking software.
Tech companies, one of the most dominant lobbying forces in Washington, have been caught off guard by the fight. It wasn’t long ago that there was scant support for changes to the immunity laws that Internet firms rely on, according to Eric Goldman, co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University.
“This has moved faster than tech companies can even respond to it,” said Goldman, who argues that the measure would merely drive sex trafficking to places where it is harder for law enforcement to find and undermine the innovation economy in the process. “Can you come up with a topic more troubling to a legislator than sex trafficking? The argument that the bill may not solve the problem and actually create new problems is hard to make. Legislators are thinking, if it has a chance to help, why not try?”
No comments:
Post a Comment