Enturbulation.org's AdSense account disabled by Google

Most of you have noticed that we often have Church of Scientology ads running on our site. We use Google AdSense, which picks ads based on the text of a given page. Advertisers purchase keywords, and the more frequently those words are used, the more likely their ads will run. This means we have no control over what ads appear. Of course, the irony of Scientology ads appearing on Enturbulation is not lost on us.

This morning, we received an email from Google AdSense:

Hello {Admin},

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage
our advertisers in the future, we've decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in
advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions about your account or the actions we've
taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information
by visiting
https://www.google.com/adsense/suppo...57153&hl=en_US.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.

It is safe to assume that the Church of Scientology did not like paying for ads which effectively supported our site, and contacted Google about this. However, as we have no control over the ads, the situation is rather frustrating.

Imagine if Pepsi ads began appearing on Coke's website. Would Pepsi be able to have Coke's adsense account disabled? It is not implausible to imagine the Church of Scientology buying keywords such as "Anonymous" and "Enturbulation" (ensuring that their ads would appear on our site) with the sole purpose of disabling our account.

Financially, this is an inconvenience, but not a threat. We have a cash buffer, allowing us to continue for several months at our current usage. In addition, the admins and mods feel strongly enough about the success of Chanology that we will personally ensure the continued operation of Enturbulation.org.

All we ask of you, the users, is to spread the word of this new development. Contact Google (we'll find the proper email addresses) and let them know what you think. In the event of a hostile entity purchasing ads with the specific purpose of disabling the site's adsense account, what options or recourse does the site have? Ask them, ask digg, ask anyone who might listen.

-----------------
DIGG THIS: Digg - Google kills Anonymous AdSense account
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(This post will be updated as we learn more, and if we are able to contact a live person at Google. In the mean time, we are looking for alternate advertising systems.)

The current battle plan is that I am going to try and get my Adsense account reinstated, but that we won't be using Adsense any longer. Poppins will be coding a custom ad serving system specific for Enturb.

There is also around $400-$500 left in advertising revenue that we generated that is in limbo. If I am understanding Google's FAQ correctly, we should still get that as scheduled as we didn't commit any type of fraud. I'll be happy about this though when the direct deposit from Google appears later this month.

Feel free to Digg the hell out of this.

Google's big, but it's not a monopoly - move elsewhere - Yahoo YPN would be my suggestion.

The problem with building your own is that you then need to go and court advertisers. It then gives scientology an in to say 'well they're paid by PrimaryAdvertiserCompany to do this against us' and then they'd probably start harrasing each individual advertiser. The good thing about adsense and Yahoo YPN is that because you don't pick the adverts they can't do that.

Aaahhh... this shit feels good. The warm thrill of action stirs the blood to further action.

How will Anonymous respond, I wonder?

Of course you could point out that trying to silence Anonymous may be deemed part of a criminal conspiracy to deprive Anonymous of its first amendment rights, thus opening Google up to prosecution under federal and state civil rights statutes.

Looks like Scientology is learning the internets.

Gee I hope that won't drop traffic to their site.



That would be so downstat!

Originally Posted by D...

Looks like Scientology is learning the internets.

they aren't learning the internets, they're just exploring their normal connections a bit further, and learning new things about their new types of connections.

they've tried all their normal things that they automatically do, now they've obviously looked into the people they can manipulate more in depth since the last time they did so (probably in hubbard's day, knowing them) and have taken advantage in the same ways as before.

this doesn't mean they know anything more about the internets, just that advertising is more complex than it used to be.
remember, it's the people of the internet that they don't understand, and it's that lack of understanding that's killing them.


edit: to be a bit more useful...

this is like the youtube thing with mark bunkers account.
key things we need to know are:
the exact policies of googles that are involved,
whether they normally apply those policies or not - to see if CoS pointed it out for them, and maybe pushed them, as it appears they did on youtube. if they don't normally apply this sort of rule at all, even with old sites, and it seems very likely that CoS was involved, then they're actively trying to hide that by saying "we've been looking through our records <found it by chance>" rather than "it has come to our attention".

Originally Posted by D...

Looks like Scientology is learning the internets.

Don't give them that much credit. They obviously are using their money to buy expertise. Pathetic!

Originally Posted by Major Boyle

Of course you could point out that trying to silence Anonymous may be deemed part of a criminal conspiracy to deprive Anonymous of its first amendment rights, thus opening Google up to prosecution under federal and state civil rights statutes.

As Enturbulation.org is not owned or operated by Anonymous, how exactly does conspiracy to deny Enturbulation ad revenue result in Anonymous losing its First Amendment rights?

It is safe to assume that the Church of Scientology did not like paying for ads which effectively supported our site, and contacted Google about this. In the event of a hostile entity purchasing ads with the specific purpose of disabling the site's adsense account, what options or recourse does the site have?

But they can choose to block their ads from appearing on sites they don't like. You might not have control over what ads are shown here, but the advertiser has control of what sites his ads appear on. If CoS had bawwwed to Google that they didn't want their ads here, Google would have gently pointed them to the "block specific sites" function.

It's quite possible that a completely different advertiser (there are a weird lot of ads that come up here) followed the link back here whilst viewing his advertising account, freaked out at his business being connected with the Thunderdome or the whole idea of a war against a "Church" and bawwed to Google about it.

Multianon here>

Originally Posted by TakeAnonMe

Most of you have noticed that we often have Church of Scientology ads running on our site. We use Google AdSense, which picks ads based on the text of a given page. Advertisers purchase keywords, and the more frequently those words are used, the more likely their ads will run. This means we have no control over what ads appear. Of course, the irony of Scientology ads appearing on Enturbulation is not lost on us.

You do have (or had) control over which ads appear on the site

From Google Adwords:

Competitive Ad Filter enables you to filter out specific competitors or specific advertisers.

Read>Show only appropriate ads>
https://www.google.com/adsense/login/en_US/?hl=en_US

Sorry I didn't mentioned this earlier could have saved you this trouble by blocking any pro cos related sites.

Originally Posted by TakeAnonMe

This morning, we received an email from Google AdSense:

It is safe to assume that the Church of Scientology did not like paying for ads which effectively supported our site, and contacted Google about this. However, as we have no control over the ads, the situation is rather frustrating.

See above, and also the CoS is also able to block sites so their ads won't appear on those sites.

Originally Posted by TakeAnonMe

Imagine if Pepsi ads began appearing on Coke's website. Would Pepsi be able to have Coke's adsense account disabled? It is not implausible to imagine the Church of Scientology buying keywords such as "Anonymous" and "Enturbulation" (ensuring that their ads would appear on our site) with the sole purpose of disabling our account.

Hereby confirmed>


anonymous group - Google Search

Originally Posted by TakeAnonMe

Financially, this is an inconvenience, but not a threat. We have a cash buffer, allowing us to continue for several months at our current usage. In addition, the admins and mods feel strongly enough about the success of Chanology that we will personally ensure the continued operation of Enturbulation.org.

All we ask of you, the users, is to spread the word of this new development. Contact Google (we'll find the proper email addresses) and let them know what you think. In the event of a hostile entity purchasing ads with the specific purpose of disabling the site's adsense account, what options or recourse does the site have? Ask them, ask digg, ask anyone who might listen.

Try other advertising like publisher.yahoo.com or amazon! Link to books like The Scandal of Scientology.

Originally Posted by anonymoose

It's quite possible that a completely different advertiser (there are a weird lot of ads that come up here) followed the link back here whilst viewing his advertising account, freaked out at his business being connected with the Thunderdome or the whole idea of a war against a "Church" and bawwed to Google about it.

Possible, although other businesses could block our site just as easily.

(also they'd need an account to even know TD exists)

Originally Posted by Anon3634068

Multianon here>



You do have (or had) control over which ads appear on the site

From Google Adwords:


Read>Show only appropriate ads>
https://www.google.com/adsense/login/en_US/?hl=en_US

Sorry I didn't mentioned this earlier could have saved you this trouble by blocking any pro cos related sites.




See above, and also the CoS is also able to block sites so their ads won't appear on those sites.



Hereby confirmed>


anonymous group - Google Search

This is why the hivemind works, good job.

Google sold its soul to the devil long ago. Google's days are numbered.