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.
But they will give that data to the Obama and Clinton campaigns.
Google has made itself mighty convenient. Whether it is necessary, is another story.
If you are an online business and virtually all of retail contact with customers is online, Google is pretty essential. Certainly the search component - and they use algorithms on that to suppress certain results. They can wipe out some small to medium businesses with a few keystrokes.
How about noticing that this is not the problem alleged.
Correct, but it is quite similar (but even more expansive) and is being alleged by many others. I offered it up merely to show a way Google can use its monopoly power to destroy an even greater number of businesses if they should run afoul of its PC apparatchiks. Heck, most people use Google in place of the phone book we all used to have right next our phones. It think Google is in a very analogous situation to that of ATT&T when it was broken up. Although in this situation it may be better to declare it a public utility.
So if non-business people don’t use Google — I find what I want without Google and I don’t have to worry that I’m being pigeon-holed. DuckDuckGo works for me.
Yet but you are a discriminating, more savvy web user than most. The mass, over 60%, of your customer base is using Google. That’s enough to make or break many.
Missouri Synod ping!
Here’s the problem -— if we demand that lawmakers do something about it, they will end up passing some legislation that will backfire, and cause us to lose even more rights. It’s what the democrats are angling for, right now, in these congressional hearings. But I don’t know what the answer is, because it’s not as if we can drive Google out of business. I know how bad it will eventually be -— I’ve read the back of the Book; I just hate to see it unfold before my eyes. Pray without ceasing -— with the election of Donald Trump, we’ve been given a bit of a reprieve, but how long it will last, only God knows.
That isn’t exactly true......
Granted it’s yet to be decided in courts whether the half dozen firms that control social media can purge non liberal content pell mell given they are more or less de facto monopolies
Facebook and Instagram
Google and YouTube
Snapchat
That’s the ones we’re up against
Between them they own much of social media platform and sites
My Pastor used to be at the Synod headquarters.
He has been preaching pretty regularly that we need to get ready for active persecution. California is getting ready to ban traditional theology on marriage, and that includes the Bible.
Google is going after the “little” publishing houses. I suspect they are holding off from angering the Catholics, or they have reached another accommodation
That does not mean a conservative cannot start their own version of those platforms. It’s a huge business opportunity................
Yes but try to imagine we do that and we purged progressives the same way
It wouldn’t stand
It’s not settled law by any means the ability to determine internet opinion content
If a bar in NYC can legally eject patrons who support Trump, then an Internet forum can do the same to anybody they politically disagree with.
Jim Robinson does it all the time.................
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