War in Ukraine, Google threatens to demonetize ‘irresponsible’ sites

For the war in Ukraine , Google chose to use an iron fist — as it had with Covid-19. The Advertising division has published a new handbook, inviting sites that use the AdSense platform to bear maximum responsibility.

Google will no longer tolerate denialism, and invites news sites and blogs to be extremely objective. Hence the threat to turn off the taps to all those sites committed to discrediting or creating unfounded doubts about the veracity of some tragic events. Google has announced that it has already applied several disciplinary measures against sites that had incited violence or had published false news about the conflict .

Some of the content against Google’s guidelines:

• Hold the victims of the conflict responsible for the violence suffered
• Unfounded implying that Ukraine is committing genocide
• Implying that the Government of Ukraine is conducting false flag operations against its own population

Google obviously cannot and does not intend to censor articles that violate these policies. The company will simply suspend its monetization . Google, in the vademecum signed by the Google AdManager team , the company reiterates that it reserves the right to demonetize a site for other reasons as well.

The same policies will also apply on YouTube, where content creators can monetize their videos thanks to advertising.