Google Issues Ultimatum to Conservative Website: Remove 'Hateful' Article or Lose Ad Revenue

PJ Media ^ | 8/31/2017 | Tyler O'Neil

[Boomer]

"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."

[robroys woman]

Sounds like an easy lawsuit to win.

[Dallas59]

It’s not “censorship”. They just won’t pay any ad revenue.

[Dallas59]

The website can post anything it wants, Google just won’t pay any ad revenue. The website uses Google and agreed to the TOS.

[Tench_Coxe]

Bookmark.

[a fool in paradise]

There was already a voluntary code by publishers which didn’t stop Kefauver’s Senate witchhunt on juvenile delinquency. EC was. Member of that one.

After the Senate hearings, the new ‘voluntary’ code banned words in the titles of EC publications (like ‘Weird’). If you were not code approved you were almost certain to not be distributed to newsstands (Dell did not comply but they held publishing rights to many popular tv shows movies and cartoon characters including Disney who did not make their own comics at the time).

[a fool in paradise]

Decades later Al and Tipper Gore would use the same angle to get on the natiomal stage in time for the 1988 presidential season.

Al Gore Sr. had missed his shot at the Presidential ticket due to the strategies of his fellow Tennessee senator. And Al and Tipper have ignored the cesspool that has happened to the culture since PMRC. They trashed careers and got store clerks arrested merely for political advancement. And we are supposed to think he’s sincere about climate change? It’s a shakedown racket and about control,

[Theo]

This is nothing new.

I work with a number of large conservative websites, and get these violation alerts all the time. Once Google completely shut down one of our AdSense accounts, without any warning, and kept the $100,000 that had accrued over the month. We petitioned them, but they neither re-opened the account nor paid the revenue our sites had earned.

Google and Facebook really are a threat, in so many ways.

[Major Matt Mason]

This is exactly why it was foolish to believe that Obama and the Left were truly for the concept of "Net Neutrality". They were for it, all right, but it was their version of it, not the actual concept that most were touting. Many at this site were sucked into going along with what the Obama admin was doing, and companies like Google and Facebook were very much a part of that admin's questionable efforts. The Left wants to control the internet, just like they have controlled other forms of speech.

[unlearner]

“There will be something seriously wrong with this country if the government all of the sudden has the power to dictate to a private company who they must pay money to.”

Wrong. Alphabet, which is the parent company of Google, is a public company.

Public companies should stick to making a return on investment for their investors. They should not get into politics or anything else that is not driven by the companies’ respective purposes for existing.

Otherwise, public companies should be required to get investor approval for every penny they use for lobbying, advocacy, and charity.

When companies like Google engage in discriminatory politics and anti-religious censorship, they are robbing the public of the public’s right to determine these things.

Google is using the retirement account funds of many conservatives and Christians to attack conservatives and Christians.

And make no mistake. We are at war. I’m not exaggerating. I’m talking about an existential struggle. What the executives at Google are doing here is putting a gun to our head.

[tbw2]

Scott Adams is right. We need to break up Facebook and Google as monopolies, because they are so big that their business decisions impinge on our free speech rights.

[WKUHilltopper]

So when’s the Racketeering charges gonna be filed?

[Neidermeyer]

Google needs to be broken into a million pieces—they have passed crazy and gone to dangerous.
***************
Absolutely... use the existing laws to handcuff them with the fired engineer and break up the monopoly.

[Pietro]

The other day I was comparing the two great dystopian novels 1984 and Brave New World.

1984 is about the gov. crushing freedom of thought through manipulation of language and history while BNW is about corporatism controlling all aspects of life and providing the elites w/ endless pleasures and distractions.

Google falls into the BNW paradigm where corporate money is used to channel thought into a narrowly acceptable corral.

We need a class action lawsuit against Google to bust it up and open the internet to all.

[Brooklyn Attitude]

Google and the left have redefined “hate” to be whatever they disagree with and have given themselves the right to suppress it.

[Boomer]

It’s as if the left has taken those two novels and made it their blueprint to fundamentally change America. Throw in Marxism, the nature of Sodom with the LGBT’s, the hate filled cult of Islam and you have the complete leftist wish list. Well, almost complete, they want all dissenters dead just like the Nazis did. That would be us.

I sure hope we have it in us to make sure it doesn’t happen. I’m still blown away at how fast this all happened. I bet the Germans and Austrians thought the same thing but they didn’t have their own history to teach them that what was happening was so heinous; many of them would commit suicide once they realized what was being done under their name.

[Garth Tater]

"We petitioned them, but they neither re-opened the account nor paid the revenue our sites had earned."

If you deal with the devil you should expect to get burned.

Keep your business activities out of the devil's reach and you'll be better off in the long run. Use alternative services. If there are no alternatives then forgo that activity and spend your time and efforts elsewhere. If there are no alternatives consider creating an alternative or at least publicizing that fact so others can come along and fill that need. Yes, you'll be giving up many opportunities that would be profitable if Google could be trusted to act reasonably but they can't be trusted and if you deal with them sooner or later you are going to get screwed.

[Greensea]

To break up google into multiple companies and regulate it as a public accomadation company. At the very least, regulate it like a baker.

[Roman_War_Criminal]

And that entire video might happen pre-trib.

[Yo-Yo]

Wrong. Alphabet, which is the parent company of Google, is a public company.

What is the difference between a "public" company and a private company?

Remember, Google, Alphabet, or YouTube, however you wish to slice it, is giving YOU MONEY. It is not TAKING your money. Therefore they are not a monopoly or public utility.

Nobody, N-O-B-O-D-Y is entitled to receive Google's money. You are arguing that the government should force Google to give money to a non-profit political entity whose views you happen to agree with.

Can you not see the absolute disaster that sort of power in the wrong hands government hands would be?

[Theo]

It’s my job, though. My work is making websites and making websites make money. One of the websites I work on, for example, earned $250k just from Facebook Instant Articles ads last month. No way to make that kind of money without working with “the devils,” Facebook and Google ... :-/