An internal Google petition “to end Google’s business with Breitbart” was recently leaked to Project Veritas. The petition — which over 1,000 Google employees have signed — calls for labeling Breitbart News as “prohibited content” to block the news outlet from “all Google-served ads.”
A Google insider says that a petition has been circulated among Google employees, calling on banning Breitbart News from Google’s advertising networks, in order to cut off the news platform from ad revenue, according to a recent report by Project Veritas.
“These people are employees of Google,” said a Google insider to James O’Keefe of Project Veritas, “They are unhappy with the election, and they are unhappy with the narratives that are being put out there that contradict the mainstream media’s narrative.”
Last year, emails leaked exclusively to Breitbart News revealed a similar story, in which a group of Google employees — with encouragement from the tech giant’s director of monetization — had begun plotting the downfall of the website through removing Breitbart News from Google’s market-dominating ad services.
“This is important, because Google claims protection under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act,” noted O’Keefe, “Basically, they say they are impartial publishers of content and therefore, not liable for any content they publish, but this document shows they are anything but impartial.”
“Hi, feminist Googlers,” began an internal Google email, “I’m sure most of you are aware of the extreme sexism that articles and comments on Breitbart disseminate. For this and many other reasons, my colleagues and I have drafted an internal letter to leadership asking them to end Google’s business relationship with Breitbart and enforce AdSense policies on prohibited content.”
The employees go on to justify their demands by claiming that Breitbart News violates the tech giant’s “hate speech” policies on AdSense.
O’Keefe, who noted that he will be attending the Social Media Summit at the White House on Thursday, asked the Google insider what message he would like delivered to President Donald Trump.
“The message that I would give to Donald Trump is that these tech companies are dangerous,” said the Google insider, “also, they may be selling our data to foreign intelligence services. This is something that needs to be asked of Google, is whether — they’re selling out data to people who don’t have America’s best interests in mind.”
“The second thing I would say to Donald Trump is we don’t need any more insisting laws to fix this problem,” added the Google insider, “We just need to enforce the laws that are currently on the books, especially Section 230.”
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler at @alana, and on Instagram.
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