I decided that since Google had gone public maybe they would be less openly bigoted against gun owners. I wasn’t interested in advertising with them but I thought perhaps I would feel comfortable with them paying me money to advertise on one or more of my web sites. Boomershoot.org gets, by far, the most traffic so I applied with that site. I got the following rejection. Boomershoot.org apparently violates one or more of their policies (see the links below). When I first got the rejection below I looked at the policy and it included pyrotechnics and explosives. It no longer does. Now the only infringement I might be violating is this one:
Sales or promotion of certain weapons, such as firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles
Which, technically, boomershoot.org is not doing. It promotes the use of firearms and ammunition. But I’m not sure they see things my way. I thought about my rejection for quite a while and considered organizing a boycott against Google (sort of like boycotting Microsoft, very tough to do). I have helped with that sort of thing before and we were successful. I did a quick search and found lots of other people already with the same idea for various reasons and decided it wasn’t very feasible.
So I decided I would expose them for being bigots against free speech as well as firearms. When I got around to posting a bunch of progun blog entries on my blog I sent them a message asking about putting AdSense on my blog. To my surprise they agreed.
So now what do I do? I had fully expected they would turn me down and I could publicly complain about them not even wanting people to talk about guns in a favorable manner. I can’t do that but I’m not entirely sure I want to help them get advertising dollars either. I could turn them down and complain to them about their policy, but that is kind of silly because I certainly knew about their policy when I requested they consider my blog.
Comments and suggests are welcome.
—–Original Message—–
From: Google AdSense [mailto:adsense-support@google.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 2:05 PM
To: joeh@boomershoot.org
Cc: Google AdSense
Subject: Google AdSense Account Status
Hello Joe,
Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. After reviewing your
application, our program specialists have found that it does not comply
with our policies. Therefore, we’re unable to accept you into Google
AdSense at this time.
We did not approve your application for the reasons listed below. If
you are able to resolve these issues, please feel free to reply to this
email for reconsideration when you have made the changes.
Issues:
– Unacceptable site content
———————
Further detail:
Unacceptable site content: Your website contains content that we do not
allow at this time. Please review our policies
(https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) for a complete list of site
content not allowed on web pages.
———————
For a complete list of AdSense criteria, please visit:
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US
https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?hl=en_US
If you would like to submit another website for consideration, simply
reply to this email and provide us with the URL. If this new website
complies with our program policies, we will help you start delivering
Google ads in minutes.
Please contact us at adsense-support@google.com if you have any
questions.
Regards,
The Google Team