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Google AdSense Banned a Random Webpage About a 32-Year-Old Bill Because It Was About Sexual Abuse (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Earlier this week, an algorithm made an absurd choice. Google AdSense, Google's advertising program that makes up the bulk of the tech giant's advertising revenue, decided that a web page about a decades-old bill about sexual abuse was "adult content," and wasn't allowed to display ads anymore. The page, which is at least six years old and contains strictly legislative information about a bill called the "Child Sexual Abuse and Pornography Act of 1986" on free legislative research and tracking website GovTrack.us, tripped the AdSense algorithm that decides what pages are allowed to run ads. This single, very dry page being flagged as "adult content" is most likely a minor fluke in the AdSense algorithm, but it's a perfect example of how a tiny tweak in the way a platform uses automation to enforce policies can send a ripple through seemingly-unrelated parts of the internet. The page was flagged by Adsense as "policy non-compliant" on Monday, with Google citing the page's "violations" in a summary of the AdSense adult content policy. Here's what Google told GovTrack: "As stated in our program policies, we may not show Google ads on pages with content that is sexually suggestive or intended to sexually arouse. This includes, but is not limited to: pornographic images, videos, or games; sexually gratifying text, images, audio, or video; pages that provide links for or drive traffic to content that is sexually suggestive or intended to sexually arouse." The GovTrack page contains none of these, yet the page still can't run AdSense.
That's well understood. The problem is when there is no human oversight to correct the inevitable mistakes that bots make either before or after the fact. Had you actually read TFA, you would see that a request for a review of the page was sent and the prompt (probably also automated) response was NO.
If you're going to let bots make the decisions, "talk to the hand" is not a very good response to questions.