Google reportedly flagged 100 pages of archaeological site Ancient Origins as “inappropriate content” due to “images of mummified bodies, nude statues, and ancient battle scenes.”
According to the Times of London, Google flagged the pages because of the images, which led to Ancient Origins being unable to host advertisements on the pages to make money.
“Ancient Origins said that it had changed images in more than 60 articles but refused to remove photographs of mummies because they were an essential part of ancient history that should not be censored,” the Times reported. “Among these were photographs of Cashel Man and Clonycavan Man, both well-preserved bodies found in bogs.”
According to an Ancient Origins blog post on the incident, a portion of the Google “inappropriate content” policy sent to the site by the Silicon Valley giant lists ““Content containing gruesome, graphic or disgusting accounts or imagery (e.g., blood, guts, gore, sexual fluids, human or animal waste, crime scene or accident photos)” as content the Masters of the Universe feel must be excluded from its advertising system.
The blog post points out a slight problem with Google’s application of the policy:
Sounds reasonable right?
But…. ‘human waste’ includes images of skeletons and mummies, including the world-famous Otzi the Iceman, Tutankhamun, Ramesses II and Juanita, the Inca Ice Maiden.
And, ‘acts of violence’ includes paintings of Zeus striking the earth with his thunderbolt, and relief carvings of ancient battles. Yes, you read that right. Unless Ancient Origins deletes all its images of mummies, skeletons and ancient battles, we are on the Google black list!
It is not the first time that Big Tech company has censored historical images, with Facebook censoring an iconic picture from the Vietnam War in 2016.
Facebook has also censored a picture of an iconic statue of Neptune for “nudity,” and a picture of a burn victim on his birthday, while Facebook-owned platform Instagram censored a picture of a 12-year-old boy with a facial deformity for violating the platform’s “guidelines.”
In 2017, it was reported that Google generates as much advertising revenue as the entire global print advertising market, and the company is one of the three biggest online advertisement companies, along with Facebook and Amazon.
Google removed advertisements from British news website Politicalite in December after it posted a Voice of Europe article about Marine Le Pen.
Left-wing employees at Google have also previously conspired to get advertisements removed from Breitbart News.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington, or like his page at Facebook.
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