For these of you who haven’t seen Matt Taibbi’s piece on Google’s risk to demonetize us over flawed, even nonsensical AI-generated fees in opposition to a handful of posts since 2018, please proceed instantly and provides it a learn. We’re very grateful for his deft skewering of the Google spreadsheet which was the one rationalization of its fees, and his attempting to fathom the logic, such because it was, behind Google demonetizing the designated posts. Recall that Google was threatening to demonetize the location completely if we did extra of the identical….when the accusations on their face (save probably one) made no sense.
Taibbi nailed one of many key explanation why the Google sanctions have been so off base: “…this can be a frequent function of moderation machines; they will’t distinguish between advocacy and criticism.” And he additionally cited examples the place articles in extremely revered medical journals which raised doubts about Covid vaccine efficiency triggered warnings like [HARMFUL_HEALTH_CLAIMS, ANTI_VACCINATION, HATEFUL_CONTENT].
Once more, we’re extraordinarily appreciative of Taibbi getting on this case so shortly and producing a compact, easy-to-digest (essential for generalist readers!), but very efficient piece, after which at outstanding velocity too.
So please, do your half by circulating Taibbi’s piece on social media, similar to Twitter, Fb, LinkedIn, and related websites like YCombinator and acceptable boards on Reddit, and posts or websites that concentrate on free speech points. Issues like this by no means occur in onesies. As we recounted earlier, the one writer we knew who obtained a lesser roughing up by Google (no site-wide demonetization risk) did get Google to again down on some fees, however he capitulated on the remaining. And critically, he was insistent I not establish him, which in context I took to imply that he noticed the Google demerits as doubtlessly reputation-damaging. So there could already be much more of this form of Google content-censoring than has been made public.
Once more, thank Taibbi for his assist!
