Manasi VarmaGoogle Ads has called it quits in its relationship with the Gateway Pundit, a far-right blog. The news was announced just last week, in an article penned by Jim Hoft, the Founder of the Gateway Pundit, which featured an email from Google’s Partnerships Manager Andrew Tucker, where the latter was notifying the publication of its move.
A Healthy Ecosystem
Tucker’s email states that Google’s main aim is to “enable a free and open internet,” where publishers are allowed to monetize their content. This, the mail says, is done by creating an ad network that can serve as part of a healthy ecosystem for digital advertising and publishers. Despite the same, Google is apparently being forced to cut ties with the Pundit, as its content has been said to be in violation of its publisher policies.
Apparently, the content being hosted by the Gateway Pundit includes derogatory or downright dangerous material, which has the capacity to “incite hatred, promote discrimination, or disparage and individual or group,” apart from containing misrepresentative content.
This isn’t the first time that the blog has been penalized. It has previously been sued more than once on grounds of libel and defamation, owing to its false reports regarding the United The Right Rally in 2017 at Charlottesville, Virginia, as well as the 2020 Presidential Elections.
Just A Day Before The Documentary
Image Credits: Nairametrics
Google Ads took the step to demonetize the Gateway Pundit barely days prior to the broadcast of Fake News: The Momeh Machine, a French documentary interviewing Benoit Tabaka, Google France’s Head of Public Policies. The interview apparent sees Tabaka (who subsequently walked out of the interview) being asked questions about the Pundit, during which he was confronted about Google’s ads that were placed on the publisher’s site.
The firm’s co-director, Sylvian Louvet, said in a communication to The Daily Dot that they had talked to Google about what it was planning to do with the Gateway Pundit, and, just a day before the documentary was aired, they realized that Google’s ads were nowhere to be found on the site.
As per a report by Forbes, the Pundit had earned a sum of $1.1 million through Google Ads during an eight month period between November 2020 to June 2021, while publishing misinformation pertaining to last year’s elections and COVID vaccines.
Experts, like Nandini Jammi from Check My Ads, have called out the tech biggie over its alleged association with platforms spreading disinformation, saying that it doesn’t “want to vet its inventory.”
Source: The Daily Dot