
Google turns off ads for blog after writing about Russia's anti-gay policies - spdustin
https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/852320166839033856
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colanderman
The images from VK included in the author's original post are somewhat
disturbing. Nothing in this incident is inconsistent with an automated process
flagging his article, and a underpaid/overworked reviewer seeing the images
without taking time to digest the article in full and concluding "yup, looks
like hate speech".

Aside: I helped moderate a (poorly-run) veganism Facebook group for a few
months. If I banned everyone who posted pictures of eviscerated animals, I'd
have banned half the legitimate members. (There's a certain type of activist
that thrives on eliciting visceral reactions from those who already agree with
them. I don't get it.) So I can understand how Google's review process could
get tripped up by stuff like this.

~~~
xupybd
Really, it was pro vegan people posting the images, not people trying to upset
the vegans?

I'm not sure I'll ever understand why people behave the way they do on the
internet.

~~~
colanderman
Yup. Like, 10:1 vegan activists to trolls. I had to fight for a "no gory
images" policy -- a good third of the members "appreciated" the images.

I don't get it either; I think some people just run on anger. I eventually
left the group since it was otherwise poorly run.

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oh_sigh
This doesn't make any sense. Google, from top-down, is incredibly pro-LGBT.
I'm willing to bet $1 that there is some other violation that happened. Or,
people who are anti-LGBT(or pro-Russian government) managed to trick google
into shutting down the ads on his blog, for example by sending a bunch of fake
traffic to it.

~~~
xupybd
I'll bet it was flagged as anti-LGBT and is simply the work of an automated
process going wrong.

~~~
colanderman
My money's on this. The pictures in the article exemplifying the hateful VK
content make the article itself look like a hate article. If I were a
(overworked, underpaid) human reviewer who saw this after an algorithm flagged
it, I'd probably have scrolled down to the pictures and tossed it into the
"flagged" pile too.

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pingmurder
everyone supports the censorship of political content they don't like, what
comes around goes around

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scentoni
The post Google used as justification is [http://americablog.com/2014/02/ny-
city-state-pension-plans-l...](http://americablog.com/2014/02/ny-city-state-
pension-plans-linked-russian-anti-gay-hate-site.html)

~~~
tw04
I mean, while I in no way support bullying/harassing/assaulting gay people -
google didn't suspend them for reporting on what was going on with VK.com.
They suspended them for advocating people call and harass the comptroller of
New York.

Reporting on an event is one thing. Encouraging people online to call and
harass an elected official is something else entirely - and I think it would
qualify as harassment.

~~~
Sanddancer
They said call and register your displeasure. That's far from harassment.

~~~
tw04
Except that's not what they said. What they DID say is:

>The LGBT rights group is calling on New York City comptroller Scott Stringer,
and New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, to contact Usmanov and Tavrin,
and demand that content depicting, promoting or extolling the abduction of
gays, blacks, Jews and others be taken down from VK.com, and that all accounts
associated with such materials be deleted.

You're doing yourself no favors by taking liberties with what was said instead
of directly quoting the article.

~~~
Johnny555
I don't understand, you said: _They suspended them for advocating people call
and harass the comptroller of New York._

But the sentence you quoted says no such thing, it says that the group itself
is "calling on" (which is not the same as "calling") the comptrollers to do
something. The group is not advocating that anyone else call them.

~~~
flukus
TIL comptrollers are a thing:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comptroller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comptroller)
. I was wondering why everyone was just rolling with the original typo.

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danderino
This is just pure speculation on the authors part.

~~~
scentoni
It's not speculation, it's right here in Google's notification:
[https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/852321786687606784/photo...](https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/852321786687606784/photo/1)

~~~
UncleMeat
It is speculation that the _reason_ is because the guy cares about gay rights.

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Mao_Zedang
Google is the true Internet Bully

