Posted on 06/19/2020 4:55:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
Well, it looks like NBC News’ Verification Center tried to go after conservative news sites and ended up peddling fake news instead. It comes after a story they pushed claiming that Google has demonetized The Federalist. Yet, Google denied they did any such thing, even refuting it on their Twitter account. This forced NBC News to edit their piece:
Google has banned ZeroHedge, a far-right website that often traffics in conspiracy theories, from its advertising platform over policy violations found in the comments section of stories about recent Black Lives Matter protests.
Google also issued a warning on Tuesday to The Federalist over comments on articles related to recent protests.
A Google spokesperson said in an email on Monday that it demonetized the websites after determining they 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.”
After publication of this story, Google backtracked Tuesday, clarifying that The Federalist had been warned about policy violations but still had time to address them.
The Federalist was never demonetized.— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) June 16, 2020
We worked with them to address issues on their site related to the comments section.— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) June 16, 2020
I feel like maybe some people aren't very good at their jobs. Maybe a whole lot of people.
It's fuckups all the way down. pic.twitter.com/IwRKTJPCNS— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) June 16, 2020
The NBC News Verification Center appears to be a brand new project of NBC News. Its twitter account was created in April 2020.
Nice work, if you can get it. Oh, btw, don't forget to pay for journalism. It's important. https://t.co/y8GegRV77c— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) June 16, 2020
The Federalist removed their comments section. Yet, upon publication of this story, which was a train wreck from the start, Adele-Momoko Fraser, who wrote the piece, thanked the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate and their Stop Funding Fake News campaign for their “hard work and collaboration.” Was there collusion here? We shouldn't be shocked, but the best part is that Fraser's attempt to clarify only made the situation worse. I mean, she did pretty much admit this was a 'woke' social justice move:
NEW -- from @NBC_VC. Thanks to @SFFakeNews and @CCDHate for their hard work and collaboration! https://t.co/dorhdZy1t1— Adele-Momoko Fraser (@AMFraserNBC) June 16, 2020
1/ To clarify this earlier tweet, we obtained this research exclusively from @SFFakeNews but we did not collaborate on the research itself. https://t.co/RH4TeZJSYr— Adele-Momoko Fraser (@AMFraserNBC) June 17, 2020
2/ Additionally - after the publication of this story, Google backtracked, clarifying that The Federalist had been warned about policy violations but still had time to address them. It now has three days to remove the violations before a ban goes into effect. //— Adele-Momoko Fraser (@AMFraserNBC) June 17, 2020
pic.twitter.com/vGcQdOU0tl— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) June 17, 2020
To clarify: You coordinated w activists in the UK & abused your platform to try to punish a US outlet you didn't like by reporting them to Google for stuff in their comments section while pretending they had published something that would be worthy of a ban. Then you celebrated. https://t.co/3TA7EqvNkW— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) June 17, 2020
Your own reporter admitted this was an activist effort by her and others to try to demonetize a competing news outlet. We now know it wasn't even based on anything that outlet published, but comments in an article. Is NBC News now responsible for any comments on their site? https://t.co/ibwYjNRmRr— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) June 16, 2020
You thanked them for their hard work & collaboration in their efforts to compromise The Federalist, a publication that’s a bit too Republican-ish for your tastes. And then you threw up a Black Lives Matter hashtag. It’s OK to be an activist but don’t call yourself a journalist. pic.twitter.com/SVdR776n9s— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) June 17, 2020
SMDH. The incompetence is staggering.— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) June 17, 2020
Remember to the Left, words are violence. Silence is violence. And therefore, anything that makes them uncomfortable is violent and hateful and any pieces criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement could slate you for demolition by the left-wing mob. Coach Mike Gundy of Oklahoma State University is under siege because he simply wore a One America News T-shirt that criticized the movement. Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson is now facing calls for his firing after his blog, Legal Insurrection, published a couple of posts criticizing BLM.
These people hate us, folks. You all know that, though someone should probably tell Sen. Marco Rubio. Show no mercy for you shall receive none. That should be the first rule in dealing with the American Left.
Also, this NBC News Verification Center looks like a fairly new venture. A huge round of applause for this rake-stepping moment.
I LOVE SmartPage.
Regards,
I despise Google and refuse to use it.
Is your phone an android?
**********
Apple is just as bad as Google. Microsoft’s Bing is probably better but not perfect
ct.
I use Bing as much as I can.
I know there are Linux phones out there, but I don't know how well they function. Also, there's *shudder* Apple.
Or back to the old style dumb phones.
I don't know any other options.
I deep dive into my Google account and turn off any tracking, targeted ads, and so on for my account. I also use Brave Browser instead of Chrome, even though it is based on Chromium.
Your mileage may vary.
Will the Federalist bring back its comments section with some sort of automated safeguard on abusive language or even active editing?
A war on comment sections opens another Pandora's box. I used to enjoy the comments sections at The Atlantic and NPR. They were quite lively. IMHO, conservatives rather convincingly dominated the discussions on many contentious topics. It was not uncommon for Atlantic and NPR reporting and opinion pieces to be ripped to sheds, in generally civil and constructive responses (conservatives on those sites minded their manners), by commentators who clearly knew vastly more about the subject at hand than the authors. It must have been embarrassing in staff meetings to have the readers expose the ignorance and blindspots of the staff on such a regular basis. The rebuttals also undermined the propaganda value of the pieces for the publications' baseline liberal readership; spineless party lines seeking validation of preexisting prejudices will always be disturbed by independent and non-conforming voices, which raise the need for more information and serious thought. I continue to believe that's why The Atlantic and NPR shut them down, though they gave other excuses. Comments sections are often the best part of publications, just as op ed sections, in the olden days, were often the best part of newspapers. I can understand why the left is uncomfortable with them.
The Atlantic and NPR dropped their comments sections and pushed responses to Twitter and Facebook. Of course, we now know the political disciplines in play there.
The issue now arising is whether the pressure on The Federalist and ZeroHedge is a one-off or an opening salvo in a new campaign to shut down conservative access to comments sections more broadly, which are highly visible public platforms. I'd bet the latter. The leftist goal is to control and censor all online communication; everything outside the party line becomes hatespeech. But here's the rub: if Google insists that conservative publications have editorial responsibility for all comments in the comment section, isn't that game, set and match for the argument about Facebook, Twitter and other left-dominated platforms being publishers rather than neutral platforms?
Can’t vouch for it, but this is the most recent guide I could find.
https://www.howtogeek.com/348792/how-to-remove-google-from-your-life/
I hope it will, I always read the readers comments and sometimes reply.
The comments on Zero Hedge are one of the few remaining free speech zones on the Internet.
Snowflakes cannot deal with free speech.
agreed. I use duckduckgo 99% of the time. Occasionally I’ll use google maps
Exactly - everybody gets attacked by somebody. If you cant handle that, don't go there.
Yes there are a lot of anti-Semitic comments and not quite a proportional number of pro-Marxist comments. Posters freely attack the Chinese Communist Party. I think the latter is Google's big problem with the site.
I think it is high time that google (I refuse to capitalize the word) to be told what it can do and what not.
Bump
Yep. Classify it as a telecomm or news organization, with appropriate laws applying...
Bing just enriches Bill Gates. Use Startpage.com
bttt
If you go to a site with googleads you will be tracked. I do not use google for anything. After ordering a pizza online, I went to a news forum that uses googleads and there were wall to wall ads of the pizza place I had just ordered from.
So I started shopping for bikinis and lingerie and sure enough, bikini and lingerie ads started popping up on the site. Very nice wallpaper.
“I use duckduckgo 99% of the time.”
Not too long ago i was using google to track down an old article that was posted here on freerepublic. I couldnt recall the title, but i recalled a few passages in the article. So i used a few keywords that i recalled was in the article. Plus one of the words i used for my search was “freerepublic” in the hopes it would find for me the article on FR that i was looking for.
The results given to me in my google search were nothing but a large variety of liberal and leftwing sources which had articles on the subject. But not the article i was looking for. And absolutely no results for freerepublic.
So i went over to duckduckgo and used the very same keywords i used in my google search. Including “freerepublic” again. Bingo. The top results that popped up were all freerepublic. One of which was the exact article i was looking for.
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