Amid the rising uproar over racism around the world, Google has banned ZeroHedge from its advertising platform over policy violations found in the comment section of stories about the recent Black Lives Matter protests. The far-right website is known for doing stories on conspiracy theories. On Tuesday, Google also issued a warning on Tuesday to The Federalist over comment on articles related to recent protests.
A Google spokesperson told NBC on Monday that it demonetized the websites after determining they violated its policies on content related to race.
“We have strict publisher policies that govern the content ads can run on and explicitly prohibit derogatory content that promotes hatred, intolerance, violence or discrimination based on race from monetizing," the spokesperson told NBC. "When a page or site violates our policies, we take action. In this case, we’ve removed both sites’ ability to monetize with Google.”
After publication of this story, Google backtracked Tuesday, clarifying that The Federalist had been warned about policy violations but still had time to address them. It now has three days to remove the violations before a ban goes into effect.
Google notified ZeroHedge of the policy violations last week and banned the website from its ad platform.
Google's ban comes after the company was notified of research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a British nonprofit that combats online hate and misinformation. They found that 10 U.S-based websites have published what they say are racist articles about the protests, and projected that the websites would make millions of dollars through Google Ads.
ZeroHedge had already been demonetized prior to NBC News’ inquiry, Google said. Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said it found advertisements for many companies that had otherwise made public statements supporting Black Lives Matter and the recent protests running on the websites.
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