The site of France-Evening, which has been disseminating conspiratorial articles on vaccination or health measures since the start of the pandemic, has lost one of its main funding tools. Google confirmed, Friday, September 10, to have cut off the site’s access to its advertising distribution platform, Google ADS.
“Google has a clear publisher policy that is designed to ensure our users have a positive experience, while protecting brands from showing their ads alongside dangerous and misleading content.”, details a Google spokesperson at World. “We have warned France-Evening before taking any action, asking them to remedy persistent violations of our rules. We will not serve Google ads on their site until they follow our policies. “
Lawsuit in progress
In the spring, Google had already closed the Youtube channel of France-Evening, and dereferenced the site of its Google news service, for repeated breaches of its policy on medical and health information. France-Evening had lodged a complaint; the site has lost in first instance, but appealed the decision.
The cutoff of Google’s ads on France-Evening comes shortly after the broadcast of a report from the program “Complément d’études”, which denounced the use of Google’s advertising tools by several major conspiratorial sites, including France-Evening. Google also cut off access to the very popular American far-right site this week. Gateway pundit, widely mentioned in “Complément d’inquête”, to its advertisements. Google claims that 1.3 million sites lost their access to Google ADS last year.
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