Truth behind Praag Google ad issues
Google hinted that hate speech may be behind the company’s decision to discontinue its advertising service on the Pro Afrikaans Action Group (Praag) website, but the fact that it is in Afrikaans may be the real reason.
A recent report suggested that the Praag website was facing financial ruin after Google decided to stop displaying ads on the website.
An initial report on the Rapport newspaper said that Google’s decision was based on the fact that the Praag website was Afrikaans. However, Google has also hinted at hate speech playing a role.
A Google spokesperson told MyBroadband that while they do not comment on individual cases, the answer may lie in the AdSense policy related to hate speech.
The Adsense policy states that sites with Google ads may not include or link to hate speech – including content that incites hatred or promotes violence against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin.
The policy also prohibits content that incites hatred or promotes violence based on religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, sexual orientation/gender identity, harassment, bullying, or similar content that advocates harm against an individual or group.
“If we discover a site which is breaking our policies we will take the appropriate action,” Google said.
However, MyBroadband is in possession of communication from Google’s Adsense department which explicitly states that the problem is with the site’s language (Google Adsense supported languages here).
“Your ads got disabled as the language of your website is unfortunately an unsupported language,” an e-mail from Google’s AdSense support team states.
Praag founder Dan Roodt also told MyBroadband that he was informed by Google that they will discontinue their advertising because the website was in Afrikaans.
Roodt said that he was unaware of any problems related to hate speech until MyBroadband asked for comment. “Google has not sent us any notification concerning such issues,” said Roodt.
“We are committed to freedom of speech but also publishing responsibly within the law and ethical norms. Up to now, we have not received any complaints from readers or members of the public either,” said Roodt.
Praag hate speech suggestions
The Praag website has been accused of racism and hate speech on its discussion forums by the Facebook-group “Speak Out Against the Website Praag”.
The group posted the following message on its Facebook page:
Thank you for your action so far. Unfortunately the Google banner still appears on www.praag.org
Please report the site to Google, so that this site generates no income.
It’s against Google’s policies to have their banners on any site that promotes racism and hate towards specific groups of people.
It would therefore not be surprising if Google decided to discontinue its Adsense service on the Praag website because of hate speech allegations.
Roodt said that they stand to lose approximately R10,000 from this, and will seek appropriate remedies against those groups or individuals who are violating their rights with their campaign against them.
“In this respect, we have also been a victim of a massive DDOS attack over the past few days, bringing our server down and taking our websites offline for approximately 24 hours,” said Roodt.
“We will lay appropriate criminal charges concerning this cyber-attack as well as other ongoing attacks on us, our freedom of speech, as well as our right to publish in Afrikaans in South Africa and world-wide.”
Removing potential hate speech content
Roodt said that if they receive any request from Google to remove content, they will have to look at the specific content and whether removal is justified.
“Given the enormous presence of Google on the internet, we wish to maintain a cordial relationship with the global giant but would also have to balance its views against our own norms regarding freedom of speech in South Africa which is clearly under threat from extremist, anti-minority groups,” said Roodt.
“Some of these groups are openly advocating genocide against Afrikaners, especially farmers or they wish to expel Afrikaners from the country, eradicate Afrikaans, Afrikaans place names, and so on.”
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Afrikaans website Praag under pressure after Google ad decision
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