Almost every day I get an email notification from Google that they've removed their ads from another article page on OEN, effectively de-monetizing the content. It's almost always because of content related to Covid or vaccination. Before Covid, we might get such notifications every few months.
We'll keep running content based on our decisions and criteria, not Google's... or should I call them by their new name, Alphabet?
Google changed their name to Alphabet. Facebook has changed their name to Meta. The names they had were worth at least hundreds of millions. Why did they change them? Remember when Google had the slogan, "do no evil"? Now Google and Facebook and too many other major companies run too much of their operations using mindless algorithms. I can tell you from personal experience that they are idiotic, moronic and far too often wrong.
I don't think that they are always wrong in the case of OEN. They don't want content related to questioning or challenging the official Covid and vaccine narrative. But, for example, if someone discusses the idea that the drug that big Pharma is developing to treat Covid is similar to Ivermectin, the article will be flagged. That's the big stupid in artificial intelligence.
The use of artificial intelligence is spreading like a plague. It is used by corporations to deal with humans, with customers, so that no people have to be paid. It doesn't work for us. It does work for the companies that use it.
I've had to deal with it with Google, Facebook, UPS. It is maddening. I used to think that the ridiculous decisions were made by fresh hires right out of college looking to score performance points. Not anymore. Now I blame algorithms. When the algorithm hits, Facebook allows an appeal. You can't provide one word of defense or explanation, you just click an appeal button. I don't think clicking that button gets a human involved.
Demonetizing articles is a dangerous policy. Both parties want even more control of these megacorporations. They want them to do even more censorship. Meanwhile, the mainstream, or as I've long said, corpstream media (or corpsestream media, you pick) are getting worse and worse, i.e., better and better at towing the establishment line and talking points. We need alternative media more than ever.
Ten years ago, OEN when was tracked by Google news, we were first, second or third on search results for searches for "progressive news," Progressive opinion," liberal opinion." Google changed their algorithms, and now, we don't even show up.
I almost never use Google anymore. I use DuckDuckGo, but that just protects me from Google snooping on me. But I went to Google to check to see what happened when I searched for "Progressive Opinion" which we usually ranked as one, two or three, on. The first results page, outside of The Progressive, offers links to Wikipedia, the NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, Britannica. What the F?
It used to be that besides OEN there were many other progressive sites listed on the first Google results page. One might conclude that Google is attempting to wipe out progressive opinion. The first results are Politico, Washington Post and NYTimes. Further down the page conservative sites are included.
Google has become the embodiment of evil. It is too big. Facebook is too big. Apple is too big. I've written many articles about getting rid of billionaires (The No Billionaires, De-Billionairize the Planet Crusade ) but I think that my focus needs to be expanded to getting rid of "too big." These mega-corporations are a dangerous threat to democracy. They've probably already, through their algorithmic warfare, wiped out many progressive sites.
We're going to keep up the fight on OpEdNews. I don't even buy a lot of the anti-Fauci and anti-Gates stuff posted here, but we need to be able to talk about these things from both sides. So I'll keep doing what I've been doing with OEN. Screw F*ck the monster corporations.
And I've turned off ads for this article. I don't need Google telling me to.