Critical Mass Has Been Reached: Confirmation Of Google Blacklisting Independent Media Websites - New Network Geared For Alt Media Bravely Goes Toe-To-Toe With Google

February 14, 2018

Critical Mass Has Been Reached: Confirmation Of Google Blacklisting Independent Media Websites - New Network Geared For Alt Media Bravely Goes Toe-To-Toe With Google

By Susan Duclos - All News PipeLine

By the middle of 2017 we at All News PipeLine knew that the attacks against Independent Media had a good chance to destroy and bankrupt many Independent Media websites, as we have consistently documented how social media platforms were shadow-banning and censoring conservatives, specifically those that supported Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general presidential election cycle.

Google's video platform YouTube was and still is demonetizing conservative political content, and putting entire channels on restricted mode, meaning anyone that had their settings set to restricted could not even see or search video from those content creators. Our video channel was one of those that saw all our videos disappeared in restricted mode, despite no cursing, nudity, or any other action that violates YouTube's terms of service.

Google also manipulated their search engine algorithms, making it harder to find Independent Media sites on the first pages of their search engine results.

ANP knew it was going to hit critical mass simply by watching ad revenue dwindle away from the Google Adsense program, which many use to be able to afford to run maintain their websites, including paying the bills so website owners can afford the time and research needed to produce original material. Google allows three ads per page, and as traffic in a non-presidential election year normally drops between 10 and 20 percent, yet the revenue dropped by over 60 percent, plus all video revenue disappeared, paid by Google as well, it became clear it wasn't just traffic Google was attempting to limit, but they were somehow paying less for the ads that were being served.

CONFIRMATION GOOGLE SECRETLY BLACKLISTING IM SITES

Breitbart News has been given physical proof that Google employees are targeting them by threatening advertisers, telling them that if they allow their ads on Breitbart, they will harm their "brand safety." These employees have gone as far as to collude with a group called "Sleeping Giants" who set up a campaign to encourage their users to harass Breitbart advertisers until they agree to no longer advertise or promote the website.

Breitbart News has obtained a screenshot (withheld to protect our source) that shows Google ad account manager Aidan Wilks advising another company – a client of Google’s – that advertising on Breitbart may impact their “brand safety.”

In the screenshot, Wilks can be seen linking Google’s client to the website of Sleeping Giants, a far-left organization that has repeatedly targeted Breitbart and other conservative-leaning news sites with false claims of racism and bigotry.

The screenshot also shows Matthew Rivard, another employee at Google, advising colleagues that Wilks’ message was a “nice template” for those who wished to “call out” the issue to clients. Rivard recommends that the message should be repeated for “other key accounts.”

Until April 2017, Rivard held the position of head of industry for performance advertising at Google. This made Rivard one of the go-to people for Google’s advertising clients. Rivard’s Linkedin page currently lists him as head of industry for branded apparel and e-commerce.

Harmeet Dhillon, the Republican national committeewoman for the California GOP and attorney for James Damore, who has also seen the screenshot, said that other Google AdSense users should be concerned about secret blacklisting.

“This communication from Google’s advertising department raises troubling questions about whether the company’s ideological bias extends beyond the employment claims covered in our lawsuit, to Google’s business practices toward AdWords publisher users as well,” said Dhillon.

“If there are indeed concerted efforts at Google to undermine the advertising revenue of disfavored publishers (an allegation YouTube is already facing in court through its abrupt demonetization of Prager University videos), then this conduct may give rise to additional legal claims. At a minimum, AdSense users may question whether they are being targeted for secret blacklisting as described here.”

That explains so much. If Google is threatening "brand safety" and certain employees are actively working with the far left groups to force the higher paying ads to stop advertising on Independent Media websites, then it stands to reason that traffic in a non-presidential election year can drop the standard 10-20 percent, yet revenue would tank by 60-70 percent, threatening to knock a lot of us right out of business.

The bad news is, they are succeeding as we have recently reported, two established conservative sites, Red Flag News, and Right Wing News, have now shuttered, citing the censorship by Google and social media.

Here is how Sleeping Giants has targeted Breitbart (and others):



Then their 137K followers start targeting those advertisers, as can be seen in their Twitter feed, harassing them until they stop advertising, and Google employees are actively promoting and linking their advertisers to the Sleeping Giants campaign to help them censor and demonetize Breitbart.

That is not the only way Google is targeting Breitbart and other conservative-leaning, Independent Media, sites either, as they are also keeping a "spreadsheet," and as Bretibart states "They have people trawling each article on the site [Breitbart] to see if they can find comments that might violate their policies in order to justify not trafficking ads."

Breitbart may be big enough to withstand this type of campaign, but smaller websites cannot.

Many sites, including ANP, started looking for other ad services to supplement income, to replace other ads, and found there were services out there geared toward Independent Media, run by people that believed in free speech and were vehemently opposed to big tech censorship. Many of us also added donation options, including ANP, LifeSite News, Campus Reform, Government Slaves, Daily Signal and Daily Caller, just to name a few.

The ultimate goal of looking for alternatives to Google Adsense is so that Independent Media can survive without Google.

Who Will Google Silence Next?

PragerU

Published on Feb 7, 2018
https://youtu.be/giNJwXiktZ0

NEW NETWORK FOR INDEPENDENT MEDIA BRAVELY GOES TOE-TO-TOE WITH GOOGLE

The pro-life website LifeSite News, in reporting on the Breitbart confirmation of the secret blacklisting being done by leftist Google employees, offers the following suggestion: "With that wide-open, subjective description it would appear that most conservative websites should prepare to eventually be blacklisted by Google and therefore begin now to seek alternative sources of ad revenue."

Enter Commodity Ad Network, who has decided to go courageously go toe-to-toe with Google.

ANP heard of Commodity Ad Network from SGT Report before they launched and after reading why they were creating an ad network which they call "a disruptive ad network of creative minds who speak out against the powers that be," specifically in support of the "alt media message," we did a little research and communicated with them and decided if someone was going to put so much effort and financial resources into helping Independent Media stay alive, we were going to jump onboard. That decision was also based on the fact that someone well known, and trusted, in the Independent Media community, Steve St. Angelo, from SRS Rocco Report is part of their team.

We rolled out one ad per page, slapped it above the fold, and they began showing around February 1, 2018. Rather than making website owners wait for a net 45, net 60 or net 90 day turnover for payment, they are set up to pay the 15th of the following month, and if the dashboard data is anything to go by, their one ad will nearly triple the revenue Google is now bringing Independent Media websites in each month with three ads.

Their blog also lists all the sites that jumped on board to give them a chance as they were trying to create something to help all Independent Media, with links to each, and their Commodity Ad Network website also scrolls each website across the screen, with links, under their "Alt-Media Websites Participating in the Commodity Ad Network," category.

It gets better. Not only are they going toe-to-toe with Google on advertising, but their next stage will be creating their own search engine focused on alt-media content. Then they plan to set up a social media network and a video platform, stating "Content creators will be able to set up their own channels and publish videos without us restricting their free speech."

We will use our adserver platform to serve ads on all of these platforms as well. All our services will follow our philosophy of 100% privacy and zero censorship.

When we have people like The CEO of News Corp., Robert Thompson, actively pushing Google and Facebook to censor Independent Media websites so that MSM sites can make more money via ads, someone standing up for Independent Media, creating a network geared just for alt media/Independent Media, including "websites outspoken against the powers that be," "prepper and survivalist websites," along with precious metal websites, oil and energy research and analysis, and financial commentary,  listed as part of their key niches, might literally save your favorite Independent Media websites.

When we started ANP, we had people that helped us, like Steve Quayle who offered guidance, answered questions, helped us launch and links to us regularly, and Mike Adams of Natural News that linked to us, quoted us and advertised with us after Google, social media and big tech kicked their censorship campaigns after the presidential election into high gear, and readers that have stuck with us since the very beginning, so it stands to reason that when a service like Commodity Ad Network launches, with the sole goal of helping to mitigate the financial hardships that censorship has caused so many of us, that we would jump on board with both feet and try to help make it a success.

Via their blog:

Please, reach out to your favorite alt-media websites not listed above and ask them to consider joining the Commodity Ad Network — A Network of the Good Guys, for the Good Guys.

You can forward them our application form link and our short intro video.

Similarly, if you know of companies whose products and services might be useful to visitors of alt-media websites, please, forward them our advertiser application form and our short intro video.

The more the merrier!

If At First You Can’t Compete…Censor

Computing Forever

Published on Feb 14, 2018
https://youtu.be/U-0FPrHIHvw



BOTTOM LINE

Breitbart has now been able to confirm what many of us already knew just by looking at our Google Adsense dashboard, that leftist employees within the company are actively targeting conservative Independent Media websites and secretly blacklisting them, while targeting advertisers and threatening their "brand safety" if they allow their ads to show up on the IM websites. It is more important than ever for every single person that reads these websites, everyone that runs an Independent/Alt media website and advertisers that want their ads shown to everyone, not just those leftist employees at Google "approve" of, to unite, and help each other.

Otherwise, all that will be available will be what the mainstream media wants you to know.

Note to Readers- If we make it through March when we start seeing the revenue generated by the new ad network, we may just have a chance to turn big techs' bias back against them and come through this stronger, louder and more powerful, together. February 2018 has been the most brutal month yet due to the censorship we have been battling against this past year, so any extra readers may be able to spare for donations is greatly appreciated.

The American Delusion: Distracted, Diverted and Insulated from the Grim Reality of the Police State | The Rutherford Institute

"If properly disclosed and consistently reported on, the sheer volume of the government’s activities, which undermine the Constitution and dance close to the edge of outright illegality, would inevitably give rise to a sea change in how business is conducted in our seats of power."

 

The American Delusion: Distracted, Diverted and Insulated
from the Grim Reality of the Police State  | The Rutherford Institute
By John W. Whitehead  ~September 03, 2014

    “In the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: culture-death is a clear possibility.”
--Author Neil Postman

Caught up in the uproar over this year’s latest hullabaloo—militarized police in Ferguson, tanks on Main Street and ISIS—Americans have not only largely forgotten last year’s hullabaloo over the NSA and government surveillance but are generally foggy about everything that has happened in between.

Then again, so much has happened in the year since Edward Snowden first appeared on the national scene that it’s understandable if the average American has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the “events,” manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the reality of the American police state.

This is not to say that many of these events are not critical or important. However, when we're being bombarded with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days, it’s difficult to stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this.

In fact, Professor Jacques Ellul studied this phenomenon of overwhelming news, short memories and the use of propaganda to advance hidden agendas. “One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones,” wrote Ellul.

    Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man’s capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandists, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks.”

Consider if you will the regularly scheduled trivia and/or distractions that have kept us tuned into the various breaking news headlines and entertainment spectacles and tuned out to the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms:

In late August / early September, we were treated to Justin Bieber’s run-in with police after a bout of reckless driving, the FBI’s investigation into the leaking of celebrities’ nude photos, Brad and Angelina’s wedding, James Foley’s carefully staged beheading, Robin Williams’ unfortunate suicide, the riots in Ferguson over the police shooting of an unarmed black man, growing threats from ISIS, and the ALS ice bucket challenge sensation.

That was preceded by reports of immigrant children flooding over the border, Israel and Hamas’ on-again, off-again fighting, Germany’s victory in the World Cup, Ebola breakouts in West Africa, the Malaysian Airlines passenger jet crash in Ukraine, the exchange by the U.S. of five Taliban prisoners for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the growing legalization of same-sex marriage by the states, and the kidnapping of 280 Nigerian girls for use as sex slaves.

Before that, there was the shooting rampage by an Iraq war veteran at the Fort Hood Army base, the uproar over LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s racist remarks, the Veterans Administration’s failure to provide timely care to vets, Russia and the U.S. in a tug of war over control of Crimea, the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines flight—this one en route to China, the 2014 Winter Olympics hosted by Russia, the Seattle Seahawks’ first ever win at the Super Bowl, Gov. Chris Christie’s role in the George Washington Bridge lane closings scandal, and the outpouring of tributes over the death of Nelson Mandela.

No less traumatic and distracting were the preceding months’ newsworthy events, which included a devastating typhoon in the Philippines, France and Germany’s displeasure over the NSA spying on its people and leaders, the U.S. government’s 16-day shutdown over Obamacare, public opposition to President Obama’s plans to take military action against Syria over its alleged use of chemical weapons, another shooting rampage—this time at the Washington Navy Yard, Russia’s granting of asylum to Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning’s announcement that he is in fact Chelsea Manning, which came a day after he was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking classified documents, the birth of a new prince to British royals William and Kate, George Zimmerman’s acquittal of murdering Trayvon Martin, the Supreme Court’s striking down of the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional, and Edward Snowden’s leaking the first of what would turn into a more-than-yearlong series of revelations about the government’s illegal surveillance programs.

As I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, these sleight-of-hand distractions and diversions are how you control a population, either inadvertently or intentionally, advancing your agenda without much opposition from the citizenry. But what exactly has the government been doing while we’ve been so cooperatively fixated on whatever current sensation happens to be monopolizing the mainstream “news” shows?

If properly disclosed and consistently reported on, the sheer volume of the government’s activities, which undermine the Constitution and dance close to the edge of outright illegality, would inevitably give rise to a sea change in how business is conducted in our seats of power.

Surely Americans would be outraged over the government’s plan to turn our most casual statements into hate crimes using Truthy, a $1 million online database being created to track “misinformation” and hate speech on Twitter, as well as “detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution.” Or that the Pentagon is spending millions to find ways to put down social unrest, starting with lawful First Amendment free speech protests.

There would be no end to the uproar if Americans understood the origins of ISIS, the latest hobgoblin in the government’s war on terror, whose funding appears to track back to the CIA, which helped fund its guerilla tactics in Syria.

Parents would be livid if they had any inkling about the school-to-prison pipeline, namely, how the public schools are being transformed from institutions of learning to prison-like factories, complete with armed police and surveillance cameras, aimed at churning out compliant test-takers rather than independent-minded citizens.

Taxpayers would be up in arms over the government’s end-run tactics to avoid abiding by the rule of law, whether by outsourcing illegal surveillance activities to defense contractors or outsourcing inhumane torture to foreign countries.

And one would hope American citizens would be incensed about being treated like prisoners in an electronic concentration camp, their every movement monitored, tracked and recorded by a growing government surveillance network that runs the gamut from traffic cameras and police body cameras to facial recognition software and the armed surveillance drones that will soon blanket American skies.

Unfortunately, while much of this information can be discovered through a focused study of alternative media reports, it does require quite a bit of digging and even more determination on the part of the citizenry to take an active role in their governance—which, of course, is the key to maintaining freedom.

Professor Morris Berman suggests that the problems plaguing us as a nation—particularly as they relate to the government—have less to do with our inattention to corruption than our sanctioning, tacit or not, of such activities. “It seems to me,” writes Berman, “that the people do get the government they deserve, and even beyond that, the government who they are, so to speak. In that regard, we might consider, as an extreme version of this… that Hitler was as much an expression of the German people at that point in time as he was a departure from them.”

So where does that leave us?

As legendary television journalist Edward R. Murrow warned, “Unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.”

Filmmaker John Carpenter delivers this same warning in his film They Live, in which a deluded, blinded, indoctrinated, enslaved populace finds that the only way to break free of their oppressors is by donning a pair of special Hoffman sunglasses. Only then are they able to see clearly and distinguish between what is real and what is a carefully fabricated and expansive lie designed to keep them sated, satisfied, distracted and in the dark.

If we do not awaken to the truth and open our eyes soon, then we may well find ourselves staring at a far different, far less pleasant picture before long, and by then, it will be too late to alter our reality.

Time to don a pair of Hoffman sunglasses?