Has Google Become Evil?

[DeathofSpeech]

I am noticing that increasingly, ads placed over and to the right of atheist channel videos in YouTube are becoming increasingly ads promoting religion, theology schools, and fundy campaigns...

Most if not all of the little transparent banner ads at the bottom of atheist vids come up with a majority of theology ads.
The bottom portion of the preview screen when a video ends offer theology degrees by papermill.

Or is this just my imagination?

 

[Tylzen]

I have noted that the ads that comes up on all videos about religion are mostly Christian.
Be it a Muslim making videos about the Quran, or Atheists that are debating creationism.

I have noted this for the past year or so.

 

[Your Funny Uncle]

In this case I don't think it's so much that Google is evil but that Christian groups are wising up to Google advertising. Google ads work by figuring out the theme of the page and putting appropriate ads there so if the theme is religious, even if it is critical of religion they put religious ads there. I'm sure that if the JREF or Richard Dawkins Foundation started paying Google to advertise then you'd start seeing ads from them too.

 

[lrkun]

I don't know if google became evil, it really depends on how you define evil.

On the issue of ads, you can get rid of it by using firefox and adding the addon - adblock.

Now you have a choice of whether to see or not to see ads. ^-^

 

[AndromedasWake]

The ads for partners are set by the tags and titles of their videos. A video tagged with both atheism and christianity for example will be highlighted as a good place to display ads of a similar nature. As it turns out, there are many more (and I dare say better off) religious organisations using this system than secular organisations.

Also, there are organisations out there which will deliberately direct their anti-evolution ads at videos about evolution, surely a truly futile decision.

What tickles me a bit is that there are numerous partners out there who are, how can I say it, "evangelising atheism" and effectively getting money straight out of a church's budget to do it.

Regarding the title though, I don't think Google is really accountable. This kind of ad-management is all automated.

 

[Prolescum]

Aww and here was me thinking this was a thread about net neutrality and the genesis of a two-tier internet...

 

[Your Funny Uncle]

Aww and here was me thinking this was a thread about net neutrality and the genesis of a two-tier internet...

Me too... That's why I started my post with "in this case..."