I read an article the other day about The War On Drugs over on Salon, and I think a vodka manufacturer (a chic one, I'm sure!) paid for it. I know it's probably a Bad Thing for a lot of the people here, but I'm having a good time with this new phase of the New Economy; I'm calling it: Vodka Companies Pay For My Fun.
Isn't this sort of like the Steal This Book approach to the Internet?
Anyway, comments on the below? Interestingly, they sent it to my address that I only ever use for Paypal ... hmmm. I wonder what ads this message will generate in the archives? I hope this doesn't get us put on Google's black-list :-)
Hopefully, this message will show up here:
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040209/003175.html
----- BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE
> From: Ian Kleinfeld (DMY) postmaster at democracymeansyou.com
Dear Friends,
Believe it or not, it appears that Google is censoring certain liberal websites. Please read and forward this e-mail to everyone you know who might be concerned about this.
Recently, www.DemocracyMeansYou.com decided to add Google's AdWords to our outreach strategy.
After fine-tuning the ads to match their posted editorial guidelines, imagine our surprise when within a few hours, they were cancelled solely for the violation of an alleged guideline prohibiting sites that "advocate against a group or individual." Interestingly enough, THIS REQUIREMENT WAS NOT STATED ON THEIR EDITORIAL GUIDELINES PAGE--and as of this writing, 2/10/04 is still not--which we have downloaded at http://www.democracymeansyou.com/google for a record of the guidelines as of that date, in case they are changed after the fact.
Additionally, all keywords (all suggested for us by Google's own keyword tool) that related in any way to George W. Bush were disapproved.
We wrote to the Google representative who repeatedly declined our ads, and asked her for specifics of what would have to change in order to meet their guidelines. We sent her several links that were political in nature and could also be possibly construed as "advocating against an individual or group," including ads from MoveOn.org, other political websites, Wesley Clark, and several sticker companies, some of whom actually carry our own stickers. Her responses were again vague and standardized:
"We have reviewed your website and found that the Unacceptable Content refers to language on your site against individuals such as George Bush. . In order to advertise on Google, we recommend removing references and language that advocates against an individual, group, or organization."
Later, we were advised to "any sticker, button, shirt, magnet, etc. that identifies any individual, group, or organization and contains language advocating against them." Despite numerous requests, never, at any point, were we given a functional definition of what "advocating against" meant, and where the line between "advocating against" and satire was drawn.
Again, this is (was) not part of their posted editorial guidelines.
Regardless of our explanation that DemocracyMeansYou advocated participation, education and critical thinking, as well as publishing satire and satirical merchandise criticizing the current administration, all we continued to receive from AdWords was more or less stock replies and, given the context of our repeated rejections, ironic boilerplate like:
We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.
Even after calling Google's AdWords department, we were only told that the representative "had followed company guidelines," but they offered to have our site reviewed once again. Two weeks later, we still haven't heard from them what the result of that review was.
We find this entire experience extremely disturbing. The Internet was once about the democratization of American and world culture, and Google was at the forefront of this when, as a new "upstart" company, it turned the search engine industry upside down, basing its searches on the democratic nature of the web. Their description of their methodology even includes something to this effect. Needless to say, Google has changed, possibly because of their planned 2004 IPO. Perhaps they feel that by being more conservative, they will attract more investment when the Public Offering is released.
Google continues to present itself as a defender of freedom, saying "Google believes strongly in freedom of expression and therefore offers broad access to content across the web without censoring results." They continue, "At the same time, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site, as noted in our advertising terms and conditions."
Of course, that's sensible, but given their choice to censor DemocracyMeansYou.com and not numerous other ads that on AdWords, we can only question the sincerity of their claim.
Changes in policy and misrepresentations of companies as champions of freedom are things that the public should be made aware of. Google is a far cry from General Electric, but it's important that we catch and hold companies accountable for their undemocratic actions early in the game before it becomes entrenched in their company culture.
We ask you to write to Google at adwords-support at google.com to let them know you disapprove of their political censorship.
Best,
Ian Kleinfeld DemocracyMeansYou.com
______________ Calling someone un-American is the most un-American thing you can do.
----- END FORWARDED MESSAGE -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20040212/0a64d457/attachment.htm>