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TV Tropes Self-Censoring Under Google Pressure
mvdwege writes "The popular wiki TV Tropes, a site dedicated to the discussion of various tropes, clichés and other common devices in fiction has suddenly decided to put various of its pages behind a 'possibly family-unsafe' content warning, apparently due to pressure by Google withdrawing its ads. What puzzles me most is the content that is put behind this warning. TV Tropes features no explicit sexual content, and no explicit violence. It does of course discuss these things, as is its remit, but without actual explicit depictions. In fact, something as relatively innocuous as children being raised by two females, whatever the reason are put behind the content warning, even if the page itself doesn't take a stand on the issue, merely satisfying itself by describing the occurence of this in fiction."
Doing evil that doesn't look evil.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
What to do, what to do. It's the Bible and yet, it's porn!
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Take a stance? They could easily take a stand - tell Google to fuck off with its ad dollars.
When are y'all going to get this isn't censorship, it's marketing? Advertisers don't want to piss off customers, many of whom may well be backward hicks. Money doesn't care if it comes from a hick or an educated genius, it's still money. Google cannot keep its advertisers if they allow their ad software to be plastering ads for Duncan Hines and Soft Soap all over porn sites, or even sites some of those hicks who buy soft soap and duncan hines might consider questionable in their editorial content.
This is completely protected speech - and they have made their decision: money is more important than "educating" (more likely alienating) a bunch of hicks who can't stand the notion of two people having sex. Whoopee.
Seriously, how the fuck is describing a family unit that is headed by two females in any way, shape, or form "family unfriendly"? What the fuck is wrong with the world?
I hope the Human Rights Campaign (which my wife and I donate regularly to) takes note of this and lowers Google's ranking over it. It's just disgusting that they would act this way.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
...plotlines if there is some damn website giving out all the magic tricks to the little ones. Battlestar Galactica: WOW! The crew is named Adem and Eeve and then named the primitive planet Urth. V: Wow! The Aliens want our water. Star Trek: Wow! An creature made entirely of some unknown energy. Glee: Wow! Will the gang of misfits prevail?!
As a mature adult, I object to having every aspect of my media dumbed down
to avoid inflicting the truth on children.
I'm entitled to be entertained at levels significantly above 5th grade.
Not all of us are average ;-)
So, some "non-traditional" values are worrisome to Google? More worrisome than dealing with authoritarian governments who truly have some terrible "traditional" values?
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Yes, but Google in doing so has abused it's market position for it's own benefit. Theoretically the DoJ ought to be investigating the abuse of power. But then again, the DoJ ought to have used the Clayton Antitrust Act to prevent them from gaining so much control of the online advertising space in the first place.
Sure as hell not mine! Most six year olds I know these days know of at least a couple same sex couples, and honestly couldn't care less.
Now if you want to warn people away from America's Next Top Model, I'm with you - no child should be traumatized by watching that!
Three Squirrels
This is completely protected speech - and they have made their decision: money is more important than "educating" (more likely alienating) a bunch of hicks who can't stand the notion of two people having sex. Whoopee.
I'm not sure you or the GP understands how protected speech works.
If Google decided to drop advertising on all websites that discuss whether or not Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990, claiming "parody" is going to get you no where.
A private company is well within its rights to set standards and not do business with another private company because of protected speech that falls outside those standards.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
They could easily take a stand - tell Google to fuck off with its ad dollars.
That'd need a lot more donors than TV Tropes currently has.
As far as a free-time black hole, it's orders of magnitude worse than Facebook.
But once you've completed your initial binge on TV Tropes, it isn't any more of a time waster than Wikipedia. You can wiki walk on any large wiki, but they become shorter as you become familiar with the subject matter.
TV Tropes has the first amendment right to say whatever they like. Google has an equal right not to support them. This is exactly how censorship should work. No government involvement, no heavy hand laws or hypocritical politicians to be seen. TV Tropes could still publish whatever they'd like, but TV Tropes has decided that profit is more important than keeping the warning labels off their content. This should be applauded as a shining example of the 1st amendment at it's best, not as if Google is trying to squash their speech. Everyone has the right to speech, but if they want a megaphone, someone has to pay for it.
Until Google actually makes a statement on this, I'm just writing it off as a single Google employee misrepresenting company opinion and a (relatively) small website complaining to a favorable audience instead of doing the appropriate thing and appealing to someone else at Google.
Republican family values!
Hey, lets inflict forced proposition-8 divorces on 1000s of californian families because an imaginary diety says so, even if the constitution says govt and religion are forbidden from combining.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
... where "rights" means rights guaranteed by law.
Google can choose to do business with whomever they want. But while this isn't a legal problem it's still the symptom of a problem: that prudish Christians have far too much sway in our country, and that Google actually takes seriously the idea that some idiot with a cross up his bum might whine loudly enough for it to impact Google.
The fact that Google's response wasn't "sorry if this site mentions tits, many of us have them, go away now" is a problem, and not a problem with Google necessarily; it's a problem with our society, and the whiny Christians that get their way in it.
There's a reason why people use middlemen. Sure, they take a cut of the revenue - but they also do much of the heavy lifting. I seriously doubt that many websites can make any money off of advertising if they have to pay for all the legwork that 'approaching those advertisers and dealing directly' would require. (Assuming the advertisers are willing to spend the time/money/effort it takes to deal with individual websites - there's a reason why they are using middlemen too.)
You have entered into the brave new world of privatized America. Do not attempt to adjust your internet experience. We will control all that you see and hear.
They're gay, not infertile. Use your imagination.
PS. Churches don't give the licenses, the government does. The government may not have created marriage, but if they can regulate it (which you don't seem to have a problem with), they can do so as they see fit - including by issuing licenses and deciding who they will issue their licenses to.
Just wanted to point out that only under a very specific definition of family are children implied. Otherwise under no way are children implied when someone says "family" I would consider a married couple to be a family as would many other people.
Uh, no, it does not.
Are you unfamiliar with the concept of adoption? Of step-children? Do you think that infertile people should be unable to marry?
That would be the equal protection clause of Amendment XIV. When Alice and Bob are allowed to get married, but Alice and Bobbi are not, merely because of the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, that is not equal protection under the law.
Civil marriage is a government creation. Law doesn't "redefine" it any more than it "redefines" patents or copyrights; without government action, civil marriage does not exist.
Nonsense. There is no civil marriage without a government; and anyway, when was this mythical time when humans had no form of government? Hominid dominance hierarchies have always been with us.
No. Civil marriage is a legal institution, a contractual obligation. The social aspect of marriage is between the couple (or triad or whatever) and their friends; the religious aspect is between them and their priests, ministers, or shamans. But the legal aspect is entirely a creation of the state.
It's entirely possible for these to be separate; there are many people who are legally married whose marriage is not recognized by the Catholic church, for example. If you don't want to invite Alice and Bobbi to the cotillion, or want to disinclude them in your prayers to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, that's your own business; if you want to deny them equal protection under the law, then you're guilty of a high crime against humanity.
So what? Do you think, "Driving requires a license so it is not a right; so it's ok for the government to forbid (blacks/Christians/Democrats/whatever) from driving"? Equal treatment under the law is a right.
Your homophobia shames you. Get over it.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
If your a child with two mothers, finding that page is behind a this may not be family friendly warning could potentially be damaging... So not family friendly...
Can we get a "the following page is a warning that may not be family friendly" warning on the warning?
Am I trying to be funny or just applying logic?
When your civilization depends on a technology, are you saying you trust a private, for profit corporation more than you trust a democratically controlled government?
Can't I distrust both equally?