Two right-wing digital outlets, The Federalist and ZeroHedge, have been banned or threatened to be banned from Google’s advertising platform over content violations related to race.
NBC reported on Tuesday that Google warned The Federalist on Tuesday that it could be banned after the NBC News Verification Unit brought research conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate to the tech giant’s attention. According to the research, ten U.S. based websites, including The Federalist and ZeroHedge, had published racist articles on the protests and were projected to earn millions of dollars from Google Ads.
Google told NBC News that the policy violations resulting in demonetization took place in the comments sections of the websites; not the articles. Zero Hedge was notified of its violations last week and has since been banned; The Federalist was notified on Tuesday and will have three days to remove the violations, NBC reported.
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“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,” a spokesperson told NBC. “When a page or site violates our policies, we take action. In this case, we’ve removed both sites’ ability to monetize with Google.”
In a separate statement to the Daily Beast, a Google spokesperson said: “To be clear, The Federalist is not currently demonetized. We do have strict publisher policies that govern the content ads can run on, which includes comments on the site. This is a longstanding policy.”
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect the clarifications made by Google and NBC News following the publication of the news outlet’s original story.
