I haven't read Zerohedge since 2011/2012, but at the same time this is kind of worrisome. I really don't like the idea of a corporation deciding that news is "bad", and therefore should be punished.
There are advertising networks (like those used on porn sites for an extreme example) which have weaker rules, but the websites get smaller profits.
I’m not sure if you’re suggesting that Google’s platform doesn’t provide advertisers the ability to mark specific domains which they do not want their ads to be shown on?
I believe this feature is readily available under the Placements > Exclusions page.
If an advertiser did not explicitly excluded a certain domain, it doesn’t mean an advertiser wants to place ads on that domain.
Sorry for using this analogy again, if Google banned some porn site, but an advertiser did not add that porn site to the exclusion list, likely it still means that advertiser agrees with Google moderation and don’t want to be advertised on that porn site.
Google ads has a policy for ads and for hosters (which prohibits hatred, for example), both advertisers and hosters agreed with it when they joined the Google’s service.
One might disagree with the fact that such policy exists in Google, but that’s topic for another discussion.
I think it's naive to think that they are purely doing this to protect Advertisers' convenience.
Maybe it could. I believe the market of advertising on marginal websites is small, and it's not worth the trouble for Google to try to work on that market: the number of users of these websites is small, and the number of advertisers wanting to advertise on questionable websites is also small.
> I think it's naive to think that they are purely doing this to protect Advertisers' convenience.
It's not just convenience. When advertisers are unhappy, Google loses a lot of money, because ads make the most of Google revenue.
If you have reasons to believe otherwise, please explain.
* all these websites account for at most 1% of Google Ads network reach by the number of page views
* since these websites are to be opt-in, the advertisers' competition will be much lower, probably 1/10 of the usual click price
* since the number of advertisers will be low, and only marginal advertisers would opt-in the marginal website list, the relevance of ads (and thus the probability of a click) will be also much much lower, probably 1/10 of the usual click rate
So by banning all marginal websites Google loses only 0.01% of revenue from ads network. If my back of the envelope calculations is at least order of magnitude correct, this does look like a very little price to pay for relief from a headache associated with working with questionable websites.
I've heard this a lot... but does this really cause them problems?
Advertisers are afraid of being mentioned in some viral tweet like: "Coca-cola is advertising on the website next to a comment suggesting to kill all black people. They are racist! Let's boycott Coca-cola!"
And Google has a reputation to maintain: they protect advertisers from situations like described above.
Maybe it is not a real problem for advertisers, to be advertised on the wrong website, I don't know. But I understand they don't want to have that risk for virtually no profit.
Are advertisers really choosing to "trust google to do the moderation" or is the reality that Google is a virtual monopoly and advertisers don't have much of a choice?
AFAIU Google is not yet the monopoly among the ad networks (it holds less than a half), so it’s too early to regulate.
It attracts all sorts of nutters, the comments are 100% cancer... just don't even bother. I'm not surprised Google kicked them off.
It does occassionally have quite good articles related to actual financial issues though. You just have to wade through a lot of crap first. Jack Dorsey himself follows it on twatter.
Edit: it used regularly regurgitate articles from this crowd: https://www.strategic-culture.org
[1] https://www.city-journal.org/1619-project-conspiracy-theory
And here is a letter signed by numerous historians, the NYT response and a counter-response: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/174140
> The letter refers to “matters of verifiable fact” that “cannot be described as interpretation or ‘framing’” and says the project reflected “a displacement of historical understanding by ideology.” Wilentz and his fellow signatories didn’t just dispute the Times Magazine’s interpretation of past events, but demanded corrections.
The article tries to stain American capitalism by claiming that it originated in plantation slavery and provided the capital that made America rich. The article rests on a superficial and fallacious parallelism that tries to equate slave owners lashing slaves to work harder with capitalists pursing ever increasing efficiency. And the author, being a sociologist and not an economist, commits massive math errors, overstating the economic significance of slavery by a magnitude: https://www.thecollegefix.com/cornell-scholar-cited-in-nyts-...; https://www.aier.org/article/the-statistical-errors-of-the-r...
> Coates’s numbers come from Cornell University historian Ed Baptist’s 2014 book The Half Has Never Been Told. In a key passage in the book, Baptist purports to add up the total value of economic activity that derived from cotton production, which at $77 million made up about 5 percent of the estimated gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States in 1836. Baptist then committed a fundamental accounting error. He proceeded to double and even triple count intermediate transactions involved in cotton production — things like land purchases for plantations, tools used for cotton production, transportation, insurance, and credit instruments used in each. Eventually that $77 million became $600 million in Baptist’s accounting, or almost half of the entire antebellum economy of the United States.
See also: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/1619-project-new-york...
In fact, slavery kept the south poor (as economic theory would predict—you can’t make a society richer by enslaving labor; that makes the society poorer even if it enriches a minority of slave owners). Productivity and ultimately industrialization took off dramatically in the south after slavery was ended: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/09/ending_slavery.html
I guess it’s true that history is written by the victors. I guess it’s not so clear who the victors were and if they will remain so.
It’s strange for me, having been brought up on American idealism, and the power of freedom (of speech), democracy, that whole Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness thing.
This civil-warish thing has seemed to have escalated quite dramatically however quite recently and it’s hard not to see TFA within that context based on anti-BLM articles that ZH has been publishing.
History is written by whoever actually writes it. Thus for a century after the US Civil War a view extremely kind to the South, and Sima Qian, who lost at politics so comprehensively he was castrated is where we get most of our knowledge of the Emperor who ordered the deed done.
http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2016/11/history-is-writte...
> Thucydides’ obsession with Brasidas is easy to understand once his personal relation to Thucydides is made clear. His portrayal of Brasidas as daring, brilliant, charismatic, and clever beyond measure also begins to make sense—the greater Brasidas' past feats appear, the less damning Thucydides defeat at his hands becomes.
> Thucydides treatment of Brasidas is hardly unique. You can play this game with many other aspects of Thucydides’ History, from his attitude towards Athenian democracy (which voted for his exile) to his unflattering portrayal of Cleon (who replaced him). Thucydides lost battles with them all. The History of the Peloponnesian War was written by a loser.
I'm afraid you've lost a "P" there. Prussia, not Russia. Different places.
In that light, it is not the advertisers making the decision in this case. It is google refusing to place add for advertisers who presumably want to advertise on zerohedge.
Of course the above is simplistic. For one I don't know if alternative action existed that would not set a precedent of censorship.
It's really astonishing how much of a facade the commitment to free enterprise on the political right was now that some conspiracy websites get the treatment they deserve