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Over the last year, we've alerted our readers to specific RedState articles that Google has demonetized, meaning that no ads can be shown on those articles and RedState doesn't receive any revenue on them, for allegedly violating its guidelines. Google claims the offending articles contain "dangerous or derogatory content" or "unreliable and harmful claims," but what they really contain is content Google and/or the government deem dangerous to groupthink and the accepted narratives – content that might make people question what they're being spoon-fed by legacy media propagandists.
Some might argue that it's not censorship because Google doesn't require that we take the "offending" post down. I'd argue that it's still a form of censorship because it's making it painful to go against the orthodoxy. If RedState can't pay its writers, RedState and the "dangerous" truths and opinions published on the site will go away. (Or so it thinks.)
Since August 2023, Google has demonetized more than 85 RedState stories, and that total is growing every day. //
Why is Google flagging all these stories?
It's doing it because each flagged article harms our domain score overall, which lowers our ad rates and leads to a lower quality of ads being shown on our site.
It's doing it because we're getting closer to the 2024 election and Google wants to make sure that outlets that practice real journalism are sent a big message: that any criticism of the integrity of the election will not be tolerated.