Posted on 04/25/2018 6:40:11 AM PDT by Petrosius
The head of a Lutheran publishing house has claimed Google will no longer accept advertisements related to the organization's website "because of the faith we express."
Bruce Kintz, CEO of Concordia Publishing House — an entity of the theologically conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, took to his Facebook page on Monday to voice outrage after the organization had been told that the Google's online advertising service will not promote the CPH website because of certain religious items on the page.
Kintz's Facebook post explains that he was told by an associate earlier in the day that "Google ads will no longer accept anything related to the cph.org domain."
"They stated that the reason is because of the faith we express on our website," Kintz wrote.
More specifically, a Google AdWords support representative told CPH that references to Jesus and the Bible led to the disapproval of its ads.
"[A CPH staff member] was told, as an example, that things like our bible challenge on our VBS webpage would clearly need to come down before they could consider us for ads," Kintz said.
He argued that the news was "incredibly sobering and disappointing."
It is an uphill battle but our mission and customers are worth it," he stressed. "It is why we are here."
A Google spokesperson told The Christian Post on Monday night that "Google welcomes advertising from religiously-affiliated institutions, including Christian organizations."
However, in order to "protect user privacy," Google AdWords has policies in place "that restrict how advertisers may use data to show and personalize ads to users."
"We prohibit advertisers from using sensitive data such as race, religious affiliation, political affiliation or sexual orientation to show ads to users," a statement from Google reads.
A review of Google's advertising policies show that the company prohibits the use of "personal religious belief" to target users for advertising.
"We want ads to provide a positive experience and to be informed by users' interests rather than by who they're perceived to be as a person, so we don't allow personalized advertising based on a user's fundamental or intrinsic self-identity or their belief systems," the policy states. "Such identities and beliefs can include inherently private classifications of one's self; classifications susceptible to stigmas, discrimination, or harassment; membership within groups that are susceptible to stigmas, discrimination, or prejudices; and personally held belief systems.
"Advertisers can't use identity and belief categories to target ads to users or to promote advertisers' products or services."
According to Concordia Publishing House, the ads that were disapproved by Google were what's called Remarketing ads. Google defines this as showing "ads to people who've visited your website or used your mobile app. When people leave your website without buying anything, for example, remarketing helps you reconnect with them by showing relevant ads across their different devices."
CPH was told to remove all items that refer to Jesus or the Bible in order to proceed to use the remarketing ads or use a different type of Google ad product.
Kintz said they will not "sacrifice" their beliefs to comply with Google's requirements.
"It's no secret that society is becoming increasingly hostile to the Christian faith. This increasing hostility makes our mission of proclaiming that faith through the books, Bibles, and curriculum that we produce all the more important," he stated. "We will continue to proclaim the faith because we know without a doubt that the Word of the Lord endures forever.
"It continues to be CPH's mission to share God's Word with all Christians who are seeking faithful resources to support their faith. CPH will not be deterred by Google's actions in this instance but will seek all available avenues to connect people to Christ."
The news comes as many are accusing Google and other tech giants such as Twitter and Facebook of having a liberal bias and suppressing the reach of conservatives and Christians.
google = satan at work
You use their functions, you play by their rules..............
The world rejects the the true God of the Bible. No surprise.
They; men love world religion.
Google deliberately blocks ads from Christian and conservative sites. Google is committed to using its power to promote leftist goals: eliminate Christianity, force acceptance of theocratical dictatorship.
And we are free to criticize their rules. Furthermore, these tech giants have achieved what is known as a natural monopoly which have always been subject to government regulation. They should be declared common carriers and be required to accept all legal business. Would you allow the phone company to block calls by churches?
Well, the Google people are “world” and can reasonably be expected to act that way. cph.org is a church evangelization ministry rather than a mere bookseller. And that’s great to Christendom, not so great to secularists.
What to do? I pray (as a Christian even though not a Lutheran by denomination) that there be a wise answer. Maybe Google can be allowed to go its own way. A Christianity that isn’t hated by the world could not see the salvation of a soul from a wet paper bag. The litmus test with the world is working. It says “we don’t like you.”
They should be declared common carriers and be required to accept all legal business, but they haven’t as yet.
Their money buys them the independence they have thru PACs and campaign contributions.
The Suckerberg testimony before Congress was a sham. Nearly every Senator on that panel had money from FB in their campaign chest..................
Normally, I do Yahoo Search, but I tried using duck duck go, but I do not feel comfortable with its results. I guess Bing would be alright but I am not sure if that is not just another Google derivative.
That might be a political consequence of too much success. Google isn’t exactly fighting Bing very hard.
This said, is Google taking ads from any houses of worship? Right now I don’t see any. I don’t know if having cph.org be able to show in an ad would be worth also getting ads for Mormon churches and the First African Ooga Booga Church.
All platforms are censored by their owner.
Amazon books must all reflect the whacky opinions of Jeff Bezos.
It is 90% fake news out there.
Paper books cannot be modified or censored.
All digital internet text IS censored.
But paper books are still true, Bible included.
Google has evolved into a public utility and should be regulated and busted-up.
My understanding of this is that they cannot use Google’s remarketing ads because of their privacy rules. It does not mean they cannot use other types of Google ads. I’m an LCMS Lutheran, so I am a fan of CPH and would really be concerned about them being excluded, but this is not quite what this article is portraying. As long as Google is consistent....
So live without Google. Simple.
True, If they take ads from one they must take ads from all, including Satan worshipers, Islam and the First African Ooga Booga Church......................
Fantastic example: could a phone company block calls for Christians like Google blocks by belief systems today.
Google and Yahoo have their leftist board of Trump hating Millenial techies stop the harmful effects of “hate speech” and “white supremacy” by totally censoring websites and forums and ads from being seen.
SHADOW BANNING is the term I recently learned.
Someday they will ban the phone calls. We have Supreme Court justices like Sotomayor and Ginsberg who base decisions totally on personal prejudice and political bias of their own. Shmeful.
So we have to bake cakes for homos, but churches can’t advertise or sell Bibles?
For a lot of businesses that's like saying "live without the telephone or e-mail". It's a essential tool that's become a monopoly. And the left it taking advantage of that monopoly power.
We prohibit advertisers from using sensitive data such as race, religious affiliation, political affiliation or sexual orientation to show ads to users,” a statement from Google reads
Well... that’s everything!
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