[testbot123]

The site isn't "cancelled" though. Google has chosen not to do business with another business because advertisers that pay Google don't want their ads to appear on ZeroHedge, whose comments section features language that said advertisers don't want associated with their brand. ZeroHedge still exists, is still listed in Google's search results, and can still make money -- just not on Google's ad network. This is the free market at work.

[SllX]

I don’t buy that. I’m not going to cry over Google not doing business with someone, but let’s call a spade a spade: this was a partisan choice. Google’s entire business schtick is that advertisers can use Google’s ad platform to target who they do and do not want to serve ads to. If advertisers really don’t want their ads to show up next to a site’s content, it won’t. Ironically the only people that would see the ad are the people that actually go to the website, so presumably they want to be on that site, and presumably advertisers would like to be where their audience is, wherever they are, unless they themselves are worried about getting “cancelled”.

EDIT: Forgot the other half of the point.

It doesn’t matter if Google makes partisan choices, it’s a free market, and we’ve got choices in life. It does matter when a company makes partisan choices and tries to pass themselves off as objective. Are you objective or do you have a bias? It’s a simple question: we all have biases, they do affect our choices, so be upfront with them rather than passing yourself off as something you’re not.

[chockablock]

It feels to me like the word 'partisan' is doing a lot of work in your argument. What if we replaced it with 'ethical'? Google's policy says they will not run ads against certain types of content that they find abhorrent (this is apparently enforced at the site level). Sure, enforcement of those standards is inevitably somewhat subjective, but, so what?

Calling those standards 'biased' or 'partisan' implies that Google's business practices are somehow unfair, or targeted at a particular group. But I don't see the evidence for that here. Just having ethical standards for who you will do business with is not in itself a bad thing!

[the_omegist]

How can't you foresee the argument people (me, in this case) are going to immediately throw back at yours : "so a company can find it unethical to do business with X, Y or Z, right?".

And then you will go to the legality argument: "no , because that would be against the law".

So why not give that argument directly? Because it's less noble.

Yes, of course google is partisan : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za4tsfdpeMw

I bet you don't think Philip Morris is a far-left company, right?

[SllX]

Partisanship and ethics are not mutually exclusive. Not to drop a bomb on this thread, but post Roe v. Wade there’s been an ethical debate about abortion and a partisan debate about abortion, and if you get two polar opposite groups of people in the same room to discuss it, it will devolve to screaming and bloody murder as both sides claim they are making a moral argument and the other is a partisan hack that cares nothing for the lives of babies|women.

Ethics are often an excuse for partisanship, and claims of partisanship are often an excuse to dismiss the other side’s ethics. It’s entirely possible that I’ve fallen into that trap myself, but I’ve never viewed Google as an apolitical animal. Maybe in their earlier days, but I was a kid in their earliest days. By the time I was politically self-aware, so was Google, and they’ve made plenty of political choices that from a certain perspective, a motivated person could argue they made from an ethical perspective.

The trouble with politics is most people don’t have political beliefs that they think are wrong. They have political beliefs because that’s what they friggin’ believe, and one of the reasons we consider free speech so essential under natural law and protect it from Congress in the 1st Amendment and the States through a process of incorporating the 1st Amendment against them is because it’s not an easy distinction to make. We made that choice back when partisans were calling themselves Congregationalists and Catholics and Anglicans and whatnot instead of Democrats and Republicans because the history of the reformation was one of Protestants and Catholics trying to seize the Armies of State power and wield them against their ecclesiastical enemies, in some cases literally burning them at the stake.

It is true that private corporations don’t have the same obligations as the State to respect free speech. They’re not governed by natural law, nor restricted by the Constitution, they’re actually protected because at the end of the day, a corporation is nothing more than a group of people pooling their assets to advance their own interests. Things like Section 230 are ultimately a liability shield against their users engaging in criminal activity, not criminal speech, but activity using their platforms to do it. The only problem is Google and Twitter and Facebook aren’t any better at making the distinction than you or I or Congress. There’s less at stake if they try, they don’t have the lawful power to stop, detain, arrest, jail, try, imprison, execute and kill that the State and it’s Officers do. But they’re putting themselves in the middle of a fecal hurricane by doing so and they’re not going to come out looking like upstanding moral citizens, they’re going to come out of this looking like unreliable, well, more unreliable business partners that will terminate contracts over partisan disagreements.

Partisanship is fine, and I certainly hope Google thinks it has some ethics, and whoever pulled the trigger on this undoubtedly thought they were doing some good for the world by doing so, just like all the Protestants and Catholics thought they were doing some good for the world by killing each other in bloody conflict after bloody conflict after bloody conflict. They all thought they had morals, and the moral high ground, but they also used politics to achieve their goals.

What isn’t fine, and I would argue ethically isn’t fine, is making partisan and even ethical choices, and being less than upfront about why you did so. You shouldn’t deceive people.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

I think you forgot a very important element.

Its a free market, they can do what they want. In a normal market

However they enjoy specific liability protections (230),unlike most market participants. So, if they exercise choice, they also forego the liability protection.

They can choose to editorialize, at a cost of losing regulatory priviledges

[goatinaboat]

because advertisers that pay Google don't want their ads to appear on ZeroHedge

There’s no evidence that this was driven by advertisers, it was a unilateral decision made by Google, influenced by a taxpayer-funded British pressure group. Does that count as election meddling by a foreign power I wonder?

[klyrs]

Google has precedent for demonitizing people on the basis of their advertiser's "partisan" preferences... this one was super unpopular in the LGBT community:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/4/17424472/youtube-lgbt-demo...

On the balance, these decisions don't seem to be driven by radical policies from either side; they seem driven by Google's love of money.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

I'm willing to bet that

businesses that pay Google to advertiser

is not a homogeneous whole.

So it seems plausible that Google could put ZeroHedge in a bucket tagged with, well, whatever seems appropriate, and let advertisers decide. If they wanted to. Which they appear to not.

And here we are.