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Google Bans 200 Publishers From Its Ad Network (recode.net) 161

Since it passed a new policy against fake news, Google has banned 200 publishers from its AdSense network, an ad placement service that automatically serves text and display ads on participating sites based on its audience. "The ban was part of an update to an existing policy that prohibits sites that mislead users with their content," reports Recode. From the report: Not all 200 publishers were swept up as part of the effort to root out fake news sites. Publishers were banned in November and December and included sites that impersonate real news organizations through shortened top-level domains, according to Google's 2016 "bad ads" report, normally released at the beginning of each year. So-called fake news publishers will sometimes take advantage of ".co" domains by appearing similar to legitimate news sites that would normally end in ".com." Google declined to provide a listing of the banned sites. Separately, the annual report on violations of advertising policy also included data on ads removed by Google. The company reported that in 2016 it took down 1.7 billion ads for violations, compared to 780 million in 2015. Google attributes the increase in ad removals to a combination of advertiser behavior and improvements in technology to detect offending ads. Also among those the removed ads were what Google calls "tabloid cloakers." These advertisers run what look like links to news headlines, but when the user clicks, an ad for a product such as a weight loss supplement pops up. Google suspended 1,300 accounts engaged in tabloid cloaking in 2016.
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Google Bans 200 Publishers From Its Ad Network

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  • CNN? (Score:2, Insightful)

    But did they get the worst fake news sites like CNN, NBC and Huffington Post? How about Faux News?
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by lewistown ( 4844129 )
      Non of those are quite as bad or bias as Breitbart, and it comes up in Google news results...
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by rmdingler ( 1955220 )

        Non of those are quite as bad or bias as Breitbart, and it comes up in Google news results...

        (FD: I run an Adblocker.) I don't get the Breitbart.

        But still, I don't get the Breitbart.

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by bongey ( 974911 )

          Huffington Post is many times worse than Breitbart, Huffing Post had a headline "WTF FBI" , there hasn't been a time Breitbart has cussed out a federal agency or person.
          http://web.archive.org/web/201... [archive.org]

          https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com] , notice all are from people saying WTF . Funny one is Obama used Win the Future.

          • Did you know? The Huffington Post is a left-leaning American online news aggregator and blog that has both localized and international editions

            founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, Jonah Peretti, and Andrew Breitbart... yep, same Breitbart.

            • by Alioth ( 221270 )

              I always thought the Huffington Post was a paper from a town called Huffington that just happened to get famous. Then I find out it was someone called Huffington wanting a vanity project.

          • Re:CNN? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by silentcoder ( 1241496 ) on Thursday January 26, 2017 @10:27AM (#53741713)

            Cussing out a federal agency or not is not a measurement of degree of bias. It is merely indicative of a key difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives tend to respect authority, it's considered a key value to them. Liberals tend to question and be critical of authority.

            There are a number of such key value differences between conservatives and liberals - and strong science to back up that concept.
            Conservatives tend to value in-group loyalty extremely highly. Hence conservatives tend to be anti-immigrant and generally don't mix much with people of different cultures or values or ethnicities. They say things like "take care of our own first".
            Liberals on the other hand tend to attach almost no value whatsoever to in-group loyalty, it's just not a value they care about. So they'll form their social groups across any and all lines, they'll care equally for a sick child of a neighbour or the sick child of an immigrant - they don't see a difference.

            Conservatives are, in general, far more anxious than liberals - they simply are more afraid (so the whole "snowflake" and "safe space" thing is doubly-stupid) - and you can see that in the way so many conservative arguments are framed around "the threat". Conservatives argue we can't save millions of refugee lives because a few of the refugees may be terrorist - but even if we deem these the most astoundingly wonderfully effective terrorists in history, and assume they can kill thousands - that doesn't make any sense to a liberal. The threat is tiny, so they don't focus on it - and besides the outcome even if the threat happens isn't that bad to them - since they don't value in-group loyalty that much the cannot consider "a thousand of our own" to be a greater loss than "millions of them". To a liberal - there is no "ours" or "them".

            https://www.ted.com/talks/jona... [ted.com]

            These are differences in fundamental morality. Note - not in LEVEL of morality. Both groups are highly moral - and indeed both believe the other to be entirely IMMORAL - but that's because the moral values they subscribe to are completely different.
            So yeah, cussing out the FBI is not a big deal for a liberal - if they did something WTF-worthy then they deserve to get WTF'd. To a conservative it goes against that deep respect for authority moral - and so seems like a huge deal. Breitbart wouldn't run that because their readership would be offended. This is key to understanding the birther movement. Why was it so important to them to try and prove Obama was not a legitimate president - why would they cling to such an obvious piece of bullshit ? Because resisting the greatest authority in the land, despising him as much as they wanted to - well that goes against their morality, the only way to square the circle was to convince themselves his authority was not legitimate. You can see the inverse of the same process happening right now as Trump flat-out lies about crowd-sizes and TV-ratings, and denies having lost the popular vote on utterly spurious grounds. Why would he CARE ? He's president, the highest authority in the land. He won the election and he was inaugurated - why wouldn't he just be happy - why make such a big deal of those things ? Because he helped plant the seed that respect for authority only applies to legitimate authority, and anything that calls even the slightest question over the legitimacy of his authority (and certainly over the degree of mandate he got from voters) is perceived as a very real threat to him. He cannot imagine that anybody would obey him in anything if they think his authority is not absolutely 100% legitimate and mandated. Which is doubly quixotic fear because frankly the people who are resisting him couldn't care less. They would be resisting just as much if he HAD won the popular vote. They care about WHAT he is doing - they question authority, they don't respect it by default and how legitimate it is doesn't enter into the equation at all. The only reason they keep bringing it up is because of how nicely it gets under his skin.

            So no, the cussing is entirely unrelated to the degree of bias - it's merely indicative of the moral differences between the target audiences.

            • I wish I had a mod point. This is a really interesting take on the differences in the mindsets, and one that I had noticed, but never quantified. Nice comment.
            • by Quirkz ( 1206400 )

              Interesting post. I'd heard/recognized some of this, but not all of those details at the same time.

              One thing you didn't mention explicitly, though maybe it correlates to your comments about in-group and threat, is that conservatives seem to find the idea of people getting things they don't deserve more objectionable. For instance, they're more likely to see a system like welfare not worth it because of scammers and cheaters, despite it also helping some truly needy, while liberals would be more likely to sh

              • I think in-group loyalty is a big part, but there are more. Conservative respect for authority includes tradition and they habe a strong moral value around sexual purity (one liberals also do not share).
                Then they see welfae going out indiscriminately so "others" get it (goes against in-group loyalty), people who violate their sexual purity values (such as gay or transgender people) get it... and worst if all single mothers get it, and get more than most ! That is rewarding promiscuous black women for their

            • The generalisations about liberals and conservatives are pretty accurate in my experience, but there's a third group:

              Sociopaths.

              They manipulate others and strive for "authority" in order to gain personally (this is one of the essences of corruption, no real surprise).

              Conservatives are more easily bent to their will because of that reluctance to question authority and the mindset that "if it's in the papers/on the news, it must be true" that insists that what's fed to us is already vetted for truth even when

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It depends what you search for. Breitbart coming top of the search results is usually a good indicator that the story is fake, because more reputable and popular sites are not also carrying it.

          Unfortunately some people see it as evidence that the news was suppressed and only Brietbart carried it, but I've never found a single instance of that being the case.

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by elrous0 ( 869638 )

        CNN is every bit as biased as Breitbart, they just dress it up better and hide their yellow journalism behind third-party sources:

        Breitbart headline: Hillary Clinton Tied to Pedophile Ring
        CNN Headline: Sources Accuse Donald Trump of Rape, Pedophilia

        The difference is trivial. Every news source is biased these days, and every reporter has an agenda. The vast majority are liberal. Some are conservative. But you're not getting the straight story out of either.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          >The difference is trivial

          Do you honestly believe that the pussy grabber being accused of sexual abuse is the same as an easily disproved hoax?

          Just so you know, saying that because they both CNN and Bretbart are biased means that they are both equally disingenuous is laughable.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Both stories are bullshit, you partisan idiot. Neither candidate is a rapist or pedophile. The fact that it's become the norm to accuse both of the major candidates of the vilest of crimes just shows how ugly political discourse has become. And the fact that even "reputable" news sources routinely parrot this garbage also shows how broken the press is in the U.S. too.

            • Re:CNN? (Score:5, Insightful)

              by DRJlaw ( 946416 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2017 @10:04PM (#53739803)

              Both stories are bullshit, you partisan idiot.

              Indeed. One story is merely backed by a voice recording of the perpetrator, who quickly gave up upon even denying the words and instead argued that he was being hypothetical.

              Who could possibly believe such bullshit... surely not I. /s

              • Trump boasting that he could fondle women and get away with it isn't an admission of rape, you moron. If a bomb goes off in the White House, are you going to arrest Madonna for it?
                • by gnick ( 1211984 )

                  Trump boasting that he could fondle women and get away with it isn't an admission of rape, you moron.

                  I guess you've got him there - It's an admission of sexual assault, not rape.

                  If a bomb goes off in the White House, are you going to arrest Madonna for it?

                  Huh? That's not even remotely equivalent. If the White House got bombed, there was a reasonable chance that Madonna did it, and then she bragged about getting away with it then arresting her would be a fine idea. That's hardly the case.

                  • Um, women letting you grab them because they want you to as you are a celebrity is not sexual assault. Did you listen to the audio recording at all?

                    Sexual assault requires that the contact be unwanted, but as that is not what he described, it is your bias, or your source's bias showing.

                    • by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

                      Um, women letting you grab them because they want you to as you are a celebrity is not sexual assault. Did you listen to the audio recording at all?

                      Yes.
                      "I'm automatically attracted to beautiful [women] -- I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

                      Sexual assault requires that the contact be unwanted, but as that is not what he described, it is your bias, or your s

            • nope (Score:1, Informative)

              Trump has admitted to assaulting women, so let's not pretend that claims against him are anywhere in the same league.
            • Except that there WAS sexual assault charges pending against Trump at the time of the election - that was news, reporting that charges were pending was reporting a fact viewers had a right to know. There were dozens of credible accusations from women who were not pressing charges as well - that too was news, these women knew Trump - had real histories - reporting the accusations was news.

              Reporting an easily disproven hoax on the other hand is blatant propaganda. CNN never said Trump was a rapist. They repor

              • There were sexual assault charges, from someone who had them thrown out repeatedly because they were found to be false when investigated.

                • Oh god who told you that bullshit ?

                  We don't KNOW who they were from so whoever told you that HAD to be making it up - there is literally no way of knowing.
                  The unknown person who laid the charges dropped them after he was elected and her identity was never made public.

                  Seriously... is this what passes for "news" in the rightwing world ? Stories that are literally IMPOSSIBLE to be true ?

                  • http://www.vox.com/policy-and-... [vox.com]
                    http://www.usmagazine.com/cele... [usmagazine.com]
                    http://www.inquisitr.com/36922... [inquisitr.com]
                    http://www.inquisitr.com/36935... [inquisitr.com]
                    http://www.nydailynews.com/new... [nydailynews.com]

                    Seriously... is this what passes for "news" in the rightwing world ? Stories that are literally IMPOSSIBLE to be true

                    I am not on the right, so perhaps you are just so far left you can't even see the truth. I am a slightly left leaning libertarian according to political surveys. Don't try to paint me as "the other side" just to attempt to discredit what I say, it is bigoted and childish, and completely false.

                    • I'm afraid nothing in those stories make me doubt he is a serial sexual assaulter. At worst, I see a victim suffering from such severe PTSD as a result of what happened to her at a very young age that her capacity to make her case very well suffers for it, and some opportunists who tried to use her for their own ends. I don't see any reason to doubt her claims.
                      Now, those details, may have been a cause to doubt it, if there wasn't also a tape in which he admitted to serial assault - and dozens of OTHER credi

        • Re:CNN? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2017 @09:24PM (#53739671)
          That's bullshit. Those aren't remotely similar.

          And your bullshit about "every source being biased" is more bullshit that you pulled out of your ass. There's good journalism, and there's bad. Breitbart is most definitely, bad journalism, if it can be called journalism at all. CNN isn't the best, but they're a hell of a lot better than Breitbart.
          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            Bad journalism = I don't agree with what they say.
            • by gnick ( 1211984 )

              Bad journalism = I don't agree with what they say.

              Bad journalism = I don't believe what they say.
              Opinions be damned - We have facts getting mangled.

          • And your evidence that lack of bias can even exist is?
          • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

            by Anonymous Coward

            CNN isn't the best, but they're a hell of a lot better than Breitbart.

            No they're not. And I'm not even defending Breitbart here. CNN just aren't much if at all better.

            CNN still give -- for now -- the appearance of responsible and reliable journalism. You look at a well edited, special effects laden, 24/7 cable news broadcast and you can't help but think that there must be teams of dozens behind the scenes tirelessly fact-checking, copy-editing, digging, editing, and verifying so that you the viewer get noth

            • "CNN still give -- for now -- the appearance of responsible and reliable journalism"

              This, in spades.

              It was clear to non-USAians back in the 1990s watching Gulf War 1 that CNN was part of the american propaganda machine, mindlessly regurgitating government press releases without any critical thought, compared to the other news sources covering the war. That's the reason they were the most commonly spoofed network when it came to portraying sycophantic press in movies and TV shows.

              Whilst CNN has improved _sli

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Claiming everything is biased is very dangerous. Sure, it's impossible to completely eliminate bias, but the intention of repeating this claim is to make people accept "alternate facts" as equally valid as facts and reputable reporting.

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by Camel Pilot ( 78781 )

          Go look at the list of headlines and Breitbart and then CNN and tell which is more biased! Breitbart is the DJT Cult of Personality worshipping channel. Go read the commenters that follow the red meat stories one after another... These people are still angry about having a black person in authority that theey would gladly lead the US into fascism and tyranny

          • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

            by Sartr ( 4784565 )
            Everyone who disagrees with us Tolerant Liberals is a racist bigot Hitler monster. How do you fucking idiots still not learn your lesson after being Trumped so hard?
            • by Duds ( 100634 )

              Brietbart is not "disagreement", it's fiction.

              If you want a left wing version of Brietbart you'd be looking for something a lot more like The Canary.

          • At least we didn't get the fascism and tyranny of Hillary...

            You do realize that those words become entirely meaningless when you use them to describe someone who is just not walking in lockstep with your tyranny, don't you? There is nothing fascist about Trump, and he has never advocated for tyranny. That is entirely in your imagination, put there by CNN, MSNBC, or whatever news station you are watching.

    • Sadly i'm afraid this might be an issue as many large news companies tend to report on things they find on other sites, including sites that report fake news :/
      • Sadly i'm afraid this might be an issue as many large news companies tend to report on things they find on other sites, including sites that report fake news :/

        Let's ignore obviously fake news for a moment, and just go with regular news.

        There is a lot of news happening in the world, every day. Just the very act of deciding what to report is going to show the news agency/reporter's bias.

        There is no such thing as an unbiased news source.

        So what one has to do, is pay some attention to what you are reading or seeing. The aggregate of the news presented will let you know, and getting more than one source is also a big help. But then there is confirmation bias

        • Sadly a lot of people don't understand that you should take everything you read/hear/watch with a grain of salt, they tend to focus on news that fits their own opinion on things and disregard any counter report or such.
          • Sadly a lot of people don't understand that you should take everything you read/hear/watch with a grain of salt, they tend to focus on news that fits their own opinion on things and disregard any counter report or such.

            Absolutely. You can make a pretty good guess of what a person watches if you talk to them for 10 minutes.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Some researchers in the UK have been looking at ways to "vaccinate" people against fake news by exposing them to little bits of it in order to make them more skeptical. Maybe mainstream news sites should start doing that. Throw in the odd click-bait fake story, and everything other than the headline is just "THIS IS FAKE NEWS" repeated over and over. People will get that little rush as the read the headline confirming their beliefs, and then the little conditioning shock as they realize it's fake, and be mo

            • Didn't they already start doing that this election season? It is hard to tell with all the fake news making the rounds in the MSM.

    • Re:CNN? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2017 @08:50PM (#53739551) Journal

      But did they get the worst fake news sites like CNN, NBC and Huffington Post? How about Faux News?

      To be sure, all of these sites occasionally (or even frequently) show bias in their reporting. But none of them are blatant purveyors of fake news.

      Fake news is a deliberate fiction, written with the intent to deceive, frighten, or anger the reader. It is not the same as news written with a bias, or even news reported in good faith, but with errors.

      • Re:CNN? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AthanasiusKircher ( 1333179 ) on Thursday January 26, 2017 @02:25AM (#53740495)

        Fake news is a deliberate fiction, written with the intent to deceive, frighten, or anger the reader. It is not the same as news written with a bias, or even news reported in good faith, but with errors.

        THIS. The word "fake" has undergone a redefinition (mostly by conservatives, but now also used by liberals) in the past couple months. In normal everyday English in other circcircumstances, the word "fake" has a clear meaning: something deliberately (and knowingly) fabricated to pretend to be true/accurate/genuine when it's not. Hence "fake ID" or "fake Rolex" or whatever. When you show a bouncer a "fake ID" to try to get into a bar, it doesn't mean you accidentally showed them someone else's ID or unintentionally tried to pass off an invalid one or something. It means you deliberately tried to pass off an ID you knew was manufactured as false.

        The fake news folks have themselves fought back by trying to redefine the English word "fake" to mean "biased" or "unintentionally erroneous". But that's NOT what the word means. They're trying to distract you from the actual fabricated "news" out there... Which is a real problem.

        • The other problem is news outlets reporting only part of the story or not reporting at all through indifference.

          Where I live, there are two newspapers. One is blatantly liberal and the other is balanced. Many times I will see the same story or editorial appear in both papers, but the liberal one had omitted some crucial details which altered the context of the story. That is subtle but dangerous.

          Then there are the news events that are not getting reported. A good example is the gun control agenda
      • Fake news is a deliberate fiction, written with the intent to deceive, frighten, or anger the reader.

        I take it you've never heard Megyn Kelly open her mouth on Fox News then.

      • None of them are blatant purveyors, such as when CNN picked up and ran with the Golden Showers article from 4Chan? Nope, no fake news there.
      • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday January 26, 2017 @11:40AM (#53742085)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Exactly. The problem is that the right-wing stuff is a mix of 1, 2, and 4, while the "mainstream news" these days has a whole lot of 2 and 4. So when left-leaners talk about "fake news" on the right where they're really talking mostly about #1, the right-wingers respond but fail to recognize that the mainstream/left stuff is devoid of #1, but the 2 and 4 stuff still makes that side look bad.

          • So, when the Left claims that Breitbart is fake news, they aren't really from the left is what you are saying? Because Breitbart fits into real news, or at worst 2 or 4.

    • But did they get the worst fake news sites like CNN, NBC and Huffington Post? How about Faux News?

      If you have an eye for humor, you can find it in lots of interesting places. "Fake news" is one of these hilarious situations that just makes me laugh.

      The whole thing started right after the election. One of the reasons Hillary lost is because of "fake news", and the articles of the time specifically talked about smaller web sites, about how more mainstream sites couldn't get the word out because some small upstart would post an article saying the exact opposite, and "how can the everyday person tell the di

    • I don't agree (Score:5, Informative)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2017 @11:03PM (#53740007)
      is not "Fake News". Fox I'll give you, but then again, Fox is literally not news. They were sued for disguising editorial content as news and (successfully) made the argument that they were an entertainment network so as to skirt laws regulating news sources. But CNN? NBC? Hell, even with HuffPo I challenge you to give me a bonafide fake news story they didn't later retract in embarrassment.

      I'm not sure what's worse, the fact that this nonsense gets modded up +5 or that real news sources have been dragged through the mud by the deluge of fake news.
      • Well, CNN reported results of a lot of polls before the election. If there was any truth to them and if the people polled were more fairly selected, then we wouldn't have had a bunch of fat crybaby women marching recently.
        • Well, no, you haven't shown that these polls were deliberately massaged to give the 'right' answer. Polls often don't represent the way people end up actually voting. This isn't new.

          • Thankfully we don't rely on polls for anything useful like determining which candidates get to debate right?

        • by gnick ( 1211984 )

          we wouldn't have had a bunch of fat crybaby women marching recently.

          Calling the protesters fat doesn't help your credibility. What evidence do you have that they were more overweight than the average populace and why does that metric matter?

          • Actually I saw the fat crybaby women on the media. And I mean the "mainstream media" including NBC and ABC. Are you suggesting that these liberal media sources deliberately misrepresented the group by focusing on the most obese females?
      • I'll see your bet sir, and raise you a brownie point. http://thefreethoughtproject.c... [thefreetho...roject.com]

        Here's CNN telling us that it's illegal for us to read wikileaks, and that we must only receive their interpretation of it.

        Or if you don't like that one, you can google any combination of "CNN Fake news" or "CNN discredited" or NBC / MSNBC / pick your choice.

      • It was a local Fox affiliate's news involving a couple of disgruntled employees who that local affiliate did not allow to exercise their own editorial content. The story never aired.

        I'm sure someone will accuse Snopes of being "fake news" or something, but I find their version of events more credible than yours.

        Did Fox News win a court battle for the right to lie on air? [snopes.com]

        • I'm sure someone will accuse Snopes of being "fake news" or something, but I find their version of events more credible than yours.

          Did Fox News win a court battle for the right to lie on air? [snopes.com]

          http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p=27363 [newscorpse.com]

          "Now, with the publication of the “Hollywood Reporter’s 35 Most Powerful People in New York Media 2015,” Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman and CEO, has confessed that his network, despite its name, is not actually in the news business. Belittling his cable news competitors CNN and MSNBC, he gave the Reporter a statement revealing his true professional aspirations:

          “In fact, Ailes, 74, no longer views those networks as rivals. ‘We’re competing with TNT and USA and ESPN,’ he says.”

    • From the article:

      "Google declined to provide a listing of the banned sites."

      http://www.recode.net/2017/1/2... [recode.net]

  • don't do evil, or if you do, say it's something else.
  • Hopefully they're going after the innumerable "satire" sites, where they act like they're copying The Onion but there's absolutely nothing funny about the stories except that nothing in them is true. Facebook is rife with people passing those around, not realizing that they're fakes -- and the site's excuse is always, "Zing! We gotcha ... it was saaaaatire."

  • ...and there'll be no more news.

  • Google declined to provide a listing of the banned sites.

    Well of course they didn't. Brother Google knows best.

  • Imagine how many more they could shutdown if there was an easy/effective way to report them, instead of endless dead-ends trying to locate a simple 'report abuse' link.
  • ... ban those same advertisers from Slashdot?

  • I wish it includes the mobile fake alerts that keep saying your mobile has viruses and keep vibrating.

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