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."

Comments

Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

Doing evil that doesn't look evil.

Re:Google

[DarkKnightRadick]

The problem being that Google, using it's ad-dollars, is forcing a site that is completely devoid of anything remotely family un-safe to make a change in the way it shows its content.

Re:Google

[houstonbofh]

What is the problem? Just open the site with a disclaimer, "This site is not filtered for children or idiots. Enter at your own risk." Now everyone is happy.

Re:Google

[hedwards]

This is precisely why the DoJ is supposed to screen mergers and say no when it would result in insufficient competition. Had the DoJ said no to Google buying Doubleclick, it's much less likely that this would've happened as Google wouldn't be controlling most of the entire market.

Re:Google

[IgnitusBoyone]

While Censorship and restraint are very different issues. One I wish Wikipedia would learn when clicking on various biology articles. Oh I wonder what that illness is (MY EYES!!). I do find it odd that a site like TV tropes which has no offensive images (that I know of) could run in to trouble on review based off a few counter culture tropes.

Hell even the articles that talk about adult issues are all extremely tame when you think about it compared to the stuff you find on forums. I wouldn't be surprised if the reviewer stumbled on to a mischievous edit or they just got red flag in general for having completely anom edits.

I don't think they should have trouble with the appeal process.

Re:Google

[Daniel_Staal]

Except the idiots who don't realize they are idiots.

Unfortunately, they have way to much say.

Re:Google

[ikkonoishi]

Google does not run ads on NSFW pages. It violates their TOS. People were editing in NSFW content on some pages, and one of the auditors at Google caught it. Now TVTropes has to make sure that any pages that may have NSFW content do not run Google ads.

Re:Google

[PopeRatzo]

But the content itself hasn't actually changed!

The technical term for this kind of thing is "Chilling Effect". It's actually a term of art.

It's one reason why there's such a danger in any single company getting as big, and as ubiquitous as Google has become. And unfortunately, there is no mechanism of the "free market" which deals with this. It's one reason (among many) that the free market will always end up being "un-free". A further problem is that there will seldom be a point at which you can say, "There! Now it has become a danger."

There probably was a point somewhere between Google being a search engine and Google being an advertising agency and Google being an ISP, and Google having trucks with cameras and wi-fi sniffers driving down every street in the world, where it crossed the line.

Since the Justice Department has been asleep at the wheel for the past several decades, Google will not be broken up as it should be. It will become both "too big to fail" and "big enough to fuck everything up".

Re:Google

[Your.Master]

It's not for free -- they have to include Google content and follow rules about how it displays, and now the terms seem to be changing out from under them to also have to hide their own content behind an annoying, user-unfriendly click-through.

Basically the problem is that Google is wielding an advertising monopoly to dictate the business terms of its suppliers (supplying eyeballs and data). That tends to be controversial -- sure, we're mostly okay if they refuse to do business with explicitly pro-slavery organizations, but as you back off into grey areas more and more people's hackles start to rise. This particular case smells like a light form of censorship, which is particularly unpopular on slashdot.

I don't think this incident is a huge deal, though I do find it frustrating that TV Tropes will be a little harder to use the next time I decide to lose myself in its pages for a while. And to be clear, I don't think Sergei Brin is sitting atop a dark tower laughing maniacally and screaming "by the power of this monopoly SOON ALL WILL BE UNDER MY CONTROL". It's merely that relatively innocent actions, when backed up by an effective monopoly, have profound effects.

That suggests a question -- does Google have an advertising monopoly? It's a tough question. French courts have ruled that they are (I'd paste a link but Chrome has had problems pasting into slashdot these days -- use Google :) to find a court ruling from France on July 2). But they do have one competitor, though it's about a quarter the size of Google: Microsoft. That doesn't sit well with a large portion of slashdotters either so there's really no remaining alternative.

Re:Google

[copponex]

I absolutely hate people who look at a successful product, grow to depend on it, and think its success should be a valid reason to impose regulations, or that it should enter public ownership.

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? To ask the question in another way, since Google can now afford to arm themselves with fighter jets and tanks and a few hundred thousand secret police to help them achieve better profits, should they be allowed to?

There's a reason utilities are so heavily regulated. When a private company has the ability to screw their customers over, they will. That's their soul reason for existence: screwing customers to their benefit. Overcharging is having a "profit margin." Bullshit fees are "profit centers." This is all well and good when you're talking apples and cars and computers, but becomes very problematic when you're talking about media control and health care and defense.

To give you an idea about some unintended consequences concerning market share, fast food companies are unsurprisingly the nations number one consumer of hamburger patties. Since our factory farms are so putrid, people started dying from e.coli from eating those hamburgers. So what was the industry solution? Inject those hamburgers with ammonia (yes, the kind in Windex) to kill the bacteria instead of cleaning up the factory farms. You may think that doesn't matter to you because you don't eat fast food, but now that method is so popular that pretty much any hamburger patty you buy will be tainted with ammonia. And thanks to deregulation, they don't have to list that as an ingredient, since it's a "processing agent."

There are thousands of examples like this, and it's the rule, not the exception. Even the unintended consequences of monopolies are bad enough to understand why we need to return corporations to what they are: temporary organizational units that serve at the pleasure of the people, which should be dismantled when they stop performing their function. If there was simply an arbitrary limit of 15% on the market share of internet advertising, we would have a standardized way of allowing competition as we have for broadband resellers, and the market would be more competitive and better for it.

Re:Google

[Jedi Alec]

You've got to admit that the idea of a google tank rolling through the streets of Baghdad taking pictures and sniffing wifi is as funny as it is disconcerting...especially if it has the logo in big friendly letters plastered all over it ;-)

As for fighter jets...not really Google's style. I reckon they'd go for unmanned attack drones. Which would kill everything in sight but would follow the instructions in robots.txt to the letter.

Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing like a family with two daddies and no mommies to really get a Republican arous... err... angry.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Anonymous Coward]

My dad occasionally brought us presents after my parents separated. Once he brought my sister a book called The Daddy machine.

After he left my mom opened the book out of curiosity and discovered that the kids in the story had 2 mothers. She read the back cover which indicated that the publisher catered to kids with gay parents. My mom had thought that my dad was trying to subtly say that she was a lesbian and ripped him a new ass over the phone while my sisters and I laughed our asses off at the whole "two mommies" thing, which is funny when you're a kid.

It was an honest mistake, because he picked it up from a big store chain in haste and couldn't tell just from a glance of the cover.

Re:Ahmurkuns 'n Ruhpublicuns

[Mr. Slippery]

Uh, couple != families. Families implies children.

Uh, no, it does not.

Were you sick from school when they explained reproduction?

Are you unfamiliar with the concept of adoption? Of step-children? Do you think that infertile people should be unable to marry?

Sorry, but where in your constitution does it say that everyone has a right to marriage

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.

and that the government has a right to redefine marriage?

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.

Marriage was not instituted by the government because it preceded any form of government.

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.

Governments passed laws to recognize and regulate marriage based on societies values which is not the same thing as creating marriage.

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.

Marriage requires a license and so it is not a right.

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.

Song of Songs

[AnonymousClown]

Please, someone create a TV show based on the Song of Songs of the Bible to fuck with those people.

What to do, what to do. It's the Bible and yet, it's porn!

Re:Song of Songs

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't be porn to people who think that the concept of lust has no place in the Bible, and do complex mental acrobatics to convince themselves that Solomon was writing about anything but.

"7:1 How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. 7:2 Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. 7:3 Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins."

Oh sure, entirely about his "love for God!"

Re:Song of Songs

[Brian_Ellenberger]

Please, someone create a TV show based on the Song of Songs of the Bible to fuck with those people.

What to do, what to do. It's the Bible and yet, it's porn!

Why do you assume that all Christians would be offended? I am a member of one of the most "conservative" Southern Baptist mega churches around, and neither my wife nor I have ever attended a Sunday School or sermon which said that Song of Songs wasn't about sex and wasn't an awesome book. If all you know about Christianity are the stereotypes on TV, I feels sorry for your ignorance. For most Protestant denominations, within marriage sex is considered an extremely wonderful and important part of a couple's relationship.

Re:protected speech?

[poptones]

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.

describing a family is family unfriendly?

[corbettw]

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.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[hedwards]

Because it's the "Christians" that are the sole arbiters of what is and is not family friendly, duh. But seriously, there's a lot of small minded bigots out there that like to use things like this to erase as many traces of things they might have to think about as possible.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[cduffy]

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.

Nobody from Google made that judgement; rather, TV Tropes' own users did... though the summary is certainly edited in such a way as to imply otherwise.

That said, the users from TV Tropes are self-censoring conservatively on account of not knowing exactly what Google dinged them for... which is clearly Not Cool.

Re:describing a family is family unfriendly?

[Mongoose Disciple]

When you start forming family units that are no longer capable of producing the primary mission, you are the one that has fucked up

And when we persecute heterosexual couples who either choose to have no children or are sterile, your point of view will seem less comical.

That's not the real reason

[AdmiralXyz]

The real reason behind Google pulling their advertising is pressure from governments and schools to increase worker/student productivity, and if you think I'm kidding, you've never been to TvTropes. As far as a free-time black hole, it's orders of magnitude worse than Facebook.

Re:That's not the real reason

[tepples]

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.

The tyranny of children...

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ;-)

Re:protected speech?

[hedwards]

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.

Re:protected speech?

[TubeSteak]

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.

*yawn*

[Altanar]

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.

Re:Solution is Deal With Advertisers Directly.

[DerekLyons]

They should approach those advertisers and deal direct, which would allow the site to operate more freely. As a bonus, cutting out the middleman (Google), would likely result in more revenue than before.

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.)

Welcome

[turkeyfish]

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.

Contracts are contracts

[Fallingwater]

I was in the TVTropes IRC channel when all this was going on, and what came out was: the contract for the ads that the tvtropes people signed with Google explicitly stated that no family-unsafe content was allowed. The wiki flew under the radar for a good while, probably because it has nothing explicit and so nobody thought of checking too hard, but ultimately someone did. Now, while the wiki has no porn or anything like it, it's undeniable that some of the arguments might be seen as not suitable for young children. Whether talk about lesbian erotica or massive amounts of profanity harm children or not can be discussed at length, but the matter remains that the contract conditions were clear. I hate censorship as much as the next slashdotter and I hate self-righteous moralization even more, but in this particular case I find all this anti-googlism to be way out of proportion. Especially considering that TVTropes didn't really self-censore anything, they just put the relevant articles behind an "are you really sure" clickthrough barrier; all the content is still there.

Re:1st amendment at work

[Hatta]

I mean, yes, if censorship exists at all, I'd rather have this happen than the government doing it,

Oh, no. I have to disagree. As Chomsky says, the government is potentially democratic, corporations are pure tyrannies. If I have a problem with the FCC censoring someone, at least I can pressure my representatives to change the policy. With Google, I have no sway at all. I don't even know who I would complain to.

Economic power is political power. When we limit the power of government, private power fills in that void unless we limit that too. We haven't gotten that far yet, but we need to if we are ever going to be free people again.