This is a serious mistake.
The Federalist de-platformed , too. (Update: Google says not. That may have been fake news.)
While I don't agree with a lot of what appears on ZH and with almost nothing that appears in the Federalist, de-platforming is not the way to go. It's corporate censorship in place of government censorship. While government censorship is prohibited by the constitution (First Amendment rights), corporate censorship is not — yet, anyway.
There is the benefit here though of waking a lot of people up to the fact that it is not only the government that is potential a problem with respect to rights and liberties. So are corporate behemoths.
Zero Hedge
Google Demonetizes Zero Hedge
Tyler Durden
2 comments:
It was fake news. Their comments sections are sewers of racist comments, and contrary to Google advertising policies. The Federalist apparently dropped their comment section, ZeroHedge was still looking at options.
The internet is international. Those comment sections are probably on the border line of hate laws in many countries. No respectable business would want their ads showing up beside them. Since the people paying for advertising are not going to be happy if they show up in that context, Google has no choice but to have policies about website content where ads appear.
A plausible censorship story here would be Google dropping them from search results.
Lets be clear: These complaints did not originate within Google.
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