DAMNING thread shows how Google is waging info wars on behalf of progs (they even targeted us!)

Here I am, once again writing about Big Tech censoring conservative-leaning news.

Or as I like to call it, THE TRUTH.

This thread from Tom Elliott about what Google has been doing to his work (and a bunch of other sites INCLUDING OURS) shouldn't be at all surprising with what we know about censorship of the Right in general and yet ... I'm surprised.

Ok, maybe I'm not.

Maybe the word I'm looking for is scared. Angry? Hey, we're all friends here, why not be honest?

Take a look:

Thread: Quick update on how @Google is waging the information wars on behalf of progressives. pic.twitter.com/xuTrC0uaKM
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

It is indeed a war.

As my publishing colleagues already know, @Google effectively controls the entire online advertising industry. Unless you’re big enough to sell ads directly to advertisers — and almost no publishers are — you need Google’s blessing in order to earn any money through online ads. pic.twitter.com/Z7wWjpDaqX
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Yup.

Keep going.

When someone wants to advertise online, they typically use an exchange like AdWords (now called Google Ads), where they choose the amount they’re willing to spend per thousand impressions (CPM), the type of sites they want their ads to appear, etc.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Most of this depends on cookies derived from millions of websites, the data of which of course comes from Google. The placement of ads and the reporting system, where advertisers ensure they're spending as efficiently as possible, was dominated by a company called DoubleClick.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Just a bit of history.

Google bought DoubleClick & later rebranded it as AdX. In other words, Google controls every level of online advertising.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

However, after Trump's 2016 victory, progressives began complaining about the “fake news” and “misinformation” that supposedly enabled his victory. Brands paranoid about being blamed for enabling “dangerous” content began pulling back on ads appearing on political content.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

They were so angry that Trump won that they started to punish everyone on the Right.

It's true.

Hell, they're still doing it.

Conservative websites were specifically targeted, although owing to the clumsy way online advertising groups websites into overly broad categories, practically every news site covering politics took a huge hit. This trend is even worse for video ads.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Yay, Big Tech.

The founder of one major news brand everyone knows — which BTW is completely nonpartisan, not that it should matter — spoke to me off the record about the impact this had on his company.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

From the start of the Trump Administration to the end, their traffic grew moderately year-over-year, but their advertising revenue dropped 70 percent. They only narrowly avoided having to shut down completely.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Which ultimately seems to be the goal of Google, on behalf of progressives.

Maybe on behalf of themselves even.

Back in the day, it was easy for any random person to start a news site and start making money off traffic. Sadly that day is gone. Over the last 5 years, Google has become hyper-aggressive in policing content their progressive staff & owners disfavor.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Fun fun.

And as its campaign against my company demonstrates, Google has many tools at its disposal.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

It has literally become the MACHINE.

In 2017, a Google whistleblower leaked documents to Project Veritas about its program for suppressing content. One doc was a list of news outlets blacklisted from appearing in Google News; almost all of them are conservative, and Grabien News is among those that made that cut. pic.twitter.com/rZeoObowsR
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Hey look, we're on there, and so is RedState.

Shocking.

In the last week, ads stopped appearing on Grabien News entirely. I checked w/ our ads firm, & they reported Google banned us. Normally when this happens, Google links to offending posts that supposedly violate their terms. For us, under "Issue location" it said, "Entire site." pic.twitter.com/Lv8f6wo0fi
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Scary stuff, you guys.

As a reminder, Grabien's primarily operates as a news-clipping platform. Our consumer site, Grabien News, features clips of what politicians and people on TV are saying. It's completely objective content.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Sort of like what we do.

The issue is that we showcase material that's embarrassing for progressives, and that's why we've run afoul of Google's ThoughtCops.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

We totally know the feeling.

Like most brands, Grabien created a YouTube channel. To participate in their partnership program, you need to have 1,000 subscribers & 4,000 watch hours. We accomplished these things relatively quickly, and were soon approved.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

While @YouTube takes the vast majority of revenue their creators generate — a story for another thread — we did earn a small amount of $ from the ads appearing on our content (almost all of which are our popular supercuts). For a short period, we were also posting "hot clips."
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

In May 2021, we posted a clip of a mom complaining about her kids being forced to wear a mask and said they have no benefit. Google/YouTube removed the video, issued Grabien a "strike," and removed us from their partnership program. https://t.co/8oGfbMUAuU
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

For posting a video of a MOTHER complaining about her kids being forced to wear a mask.

Of course, what that mom said has since been validated by dozens of studies (https://t.co/BY3XBm1ByA). If Google/YouTube were motivated by science and not political persecution, they would have removed the strike & replaced the video.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Of course.

Instead, at regular intervals Grabien has re-applied for this partnership program, and every single time YouTube has denied us. pic.twitter.com/0YVeg4xIUg
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

What a crock.

Last week, YouTube took the additional step of alerting us that they have scheduled Grabien to be removed from this partnership program entirely. Again, all for the crime of showcasing a mom expressing an opinion. pic.twitter.com/ElNp0uwpEM
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

This is all due to a mom being honest about masks.

At some point in the past, I hired someone to run an AdWords campaign for people interested in a news-clipping service. I never found it very lucrative, but at some point I checked on the progress & saw that our campaigns had been suspended ...
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

... supposedly because "election misinformation" is available on Grabien (by which they meant clips of Trump complaining about 2020).
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Ridiculous.

Like many companies, Grabien also used Gmail for our business email. However, two or three years ago we started getting lots of complaints that our emails were inaccessible; they were always ending up in people's spam folders.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Google was exploiting @gmail to minimize delivery of our emails. Ultimately we dropped Google entirely and now run our own email — and it works much better.

But that's not all!
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Not in the least.

Google's search engine also ensures Grabien is hard to find. As mentioned, I've written more than 100 articles that were linked on Drudge & thus got tons of traffic. However, whenever I try finding them these days, I need to use DuckDuckGo. https://t.co/f1TnbbUUZA
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Again, we know the feeling.

For these reasons, I stopped writing articles altogether as Google has made it impossible to earn revenue.
Grabien News isn't even a big player in the consumer news world, yet Google seems unusually preoccupied with ensuring our content remains invisible.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Seems they're preoccupied with ensuring a lot of content remains invisible.

Add it up, and Google's used at least 6 of its companies against Grabien — AdSense/Ads/AdX/Gmail/YouTube/Search/Google News — and those are just the ones I know about.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

And sadly, Grabien is not the only one.

Google's abuses its market dominance and has largely destroyed online advertising for news outlets (even left-wing sites agree).

The world will be a better place when everyone starts to #DeGoogleTheInternet.

rant/
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 14, 2023

Like I said waaaay up there, so damn scary. And while I know the pushes for you guys to sign up for our VIP Membership can get old, even annoying (I'm a realist), hopefully, you see why I'm bugging you all to sign up (and why I always offer you a special discount like SAVEAMERICA and save 50%) because what is happening to Tom is also happening to us and so many others. I'm not being melodramatic when I tell you that Big Tech is actively working to throttle and suppress us all. I mean, I'm sort of dramatic in general, but it's still the truth.

***

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