Google CEO Sundar Pichai
Pradeep Gaur | Peppermint | fake pictures
Google next month prohibits publishers from using its ad platform to display ads alongside content promoting Covid-19 conspiracy theories. It will also ban ads promoting those theories. In cases where a particular site publishes a certain threshold of material that violates these policies, it will prohibit the entire site from using its ad platforms.
Google already prohibits ads from running against content that makes harmful claims about disease prevention and unsubstantiated cures, including promotions or vaccine content that encourages users to forgo treatment. The company now goes one step further and bans ads against content that makes claims that go against authoritative scientific consensus. The prohibited claims would include conspiracy theories such as vaccines that attempt to genetically modify the population, that Bill Gates created Covid-19, or that the disease was a biological weapon created in a Chinese laboratory.
Google received nearly $ 135 billion in advertising revenue in 2019, in part through programs like AdSense and Ad Manager, in which approved websites can run programmatic advertising on their sites and make money using Google. About 15% of Google’s first-quarter revenue came from “Google network member properties,” which the company says in its annual report comes primarily from sites that participate in the AdMob, AdSense and Google programs. Ad Manager.
Google will begin applying the change on August 18 and can remove ads from individual articles or, in some cases, from entire sites. When it comes to removing ads from an entire site, the company said it has a percentage threshold for policy violations for most of its policies before it completely demonetizes a website. (The company believes that the violation of some policies, such as one that prevents child sexual abuse material, is so notorious that it results in immediate action at the site level.)
The news comes the same week when CNBC first reported that Google had started running ads again on the Zero Hedge financial market website. In mid-June, Google said it had taken action against Zero Hedge due to the site’s comment section, which Google says was constantly violating its policy against dangerous and derogatory material. Google said Zero Hedge appealed the demonetization after deciding to remove the content and implement comment moderation.
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