> This story appears to confirm that Google sees ideological influence as part of their core mission.
Google isn't threatening to deindex them, they're threatening to pull ads on the site. This is likely not because Google-the-ad-company cares very much but rather because their advertisers are very sensitive about what kinds of content their brand is associated with.
Additionally, the content that is most likely triggering Google's let's-not-scare-off-advertisers alarms is most likely not in the content itself but rather in the comment sections. For example, one of the articles they call out as being flagged falsely [0] for vaccine misinformation and hateful speech doesn't mention vaccines in the body but does have comments that would get flagged to death on HN, one of which mentions vaccines in a hostile way.
So this really isn't a case of Google censoring Naked Capitalism's content, it's a case of Google's advertisers not wanting to be associated with an unmoderated right-wing comment section. We can discuss whether that is broken (for example are the advertisers less skittish about unmoderated left-wing comments?), but it's not as clear cut as you make it sound.
Google isn't threatening to deindex them, they're threatening to pull ads on the site. This is likely not because Google-the-ad-company cares very much but rather because their advertisers are very sensitive about what kinds of content their brand is associated with.
Additionally, the content that is most likely triggering Google's let's-not-scare-off-advertisers alarms is most likely not in the content itself but rather in the comment sections. For example, one of the articles they call out as being flagged falsely [0] for vaccine misinformation and hateful speech doesn't mention vaccines in the body but does have comments that would get flagged to death on HN, one of which mentions vaccines in a hostile way.
So this really isn't a case of Google censoring Naked Capitalism's content, it's a case of Google's advertisers not wanting to be associated with an unmoderated right-wing comment section. We can discuss whether that is broken (for example are the advertisers less skittish about unmoderated left-wing comments?), but it's not as clear cut as you make it sound.
[0] https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/06/blowback-for-the-twe...