Google Ads bans Zero Hedge for racist content, but reverses decision on The Federalist

Google says it’s banning the site Zero Hedge from its Google Ads program for racist content — but it reversed plans to ban a second site, The Federalist, after the site removed comments from its articles. “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 company said in a statement to NBC News before the reversal. “When a page or site violates our policies, we take action. In this case, we’ve removed both sites’ ability to monetize with Google.”

NBC News reported the change earlier today, and it followed a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which called out a number of companies for hosting ads on sites promoting unsubstantiated or false claims about recent Black Lives Matter protests. It cited a Zero Hedge article calling Black Lives Matter “practically a revolutionary operative of the CIA via [George] Soros,” as well as a Federalist story blaming violence and looting at protests on “left-wing anarchists and antifa groups.” The Federalist has previously been criticized after organizing posts with the tag “black crime” and promoting “chickenpox parties” for catching the novel coronavirus.

But a Google spokesperson told The Verge that the outlets weren’t being demonetized because of these articles, and The Federalist wasn’t formally banned yet. Instead, they sites were supposedly being blocked because of endemic racist commenters across their articles. Google says Zero Hedge was warned last week and failed to address the problem.