The Federalist has become the latest victim in big tech censorship after Google threatened to ban the platform from generating ad revenue.
On Monday, Google announced the demonetization of the conservative news and opinion site in an email, according to NBC News, that claimed the site “violated its policies on content related to race."
The decision to demonetize The Federalist came after Google was notified of research from the Center for Counter Digital Hate, a British non-profit that “disrupt[s] the architecture of online hate and misinformation,” that claimed 10 U.S.-based websites allegedly published “racist articles” and could potentially make millions of dollars via Google Ads.
After publication of the NBC piece, Google retracted their original statement, clarifying that they had only warned The Federalist that they had three days to remove the content that violated their policies before being demonetized.
The content in question? The "comments section" of articles published about the recent protests.
According to The National Review, Google was going to implement the ban if The Federalist did not remove the comments from users that allegedly violated the platform's policy on “Dangerous and Derogatory Content.”
The author of the NBC piece seemingly took to Twitter to celebrate the move.
NEW -- from @NBC_VC. Thanks to @SFFakeNews and @CCDHate for their hard work and collaboration! https://t.co/dorhdZy1t1
— Adele-Momoko Fraser (@AMFraserNBC) June 16, 2020
After a slew of criticism from Twitter, the author of that NBC piece clarified that they only “obtained the research” and did not “collaborate on the research itself.”
1/ To clarify this earlier tweet, we obtained this research exclusively from @SFFakeNews but we did not collaborate on the research itself. https://t.co/RH4TeZJSYr
— Adele-Momoko Fraser (@AMFraserNBC) June 17, 2020
On Wednesday morning, Google issued a statement on Twitter that The Federalist was never demonetized and, since the comment section in question has been removed, said “the matter is resolved and no action will be taken.”
The Federalist was never demonetized.
— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) June 16, 2020