September 20, 2016

Google AdSense warns me about displaying "adult or mature content" because of a page where all I did was quote LBJ.

A screen-shot of the email I received appears below after the jump. (Click to enlarge.)

Here's the offending page Google cites in its email — LBJ quoted ordering a pair of pants.

Click to enlarge:


ADDED: I can see that the URL for my website doesn't end in "com" but "in" — presumably, India. That's an address that does get you to my blog. I don't really understand why or if it's something I should worry about. I don't necessarily trust the email to be from Google, and I refrained from clicking on any of its links.

48 comments:

tim in vermont said...

Size may not matter, but the guys with the big ones are sure proud.

khesanh0802 said...

Ann: It appears you have sold your soul to Google for a few bucks. They now feel they can censor your content. You have let the camel's nose under the tent. Right now, if I were you, I would cut it off.

Etienne said...

"Google Ads may not be displayed on Mature content..."

I knew you were going downhill with all the advertising shit. You need to start writing for a younger audience to get all the chimp change revenue from California.

Get rid of that mature stuff like politics and law...

Temujin said...

Jeez, I hate Google. Those blood-suckers are taking over the world. No wait. I'm just kidding. I love Google. No...that's not even enough. I lurve Google. Seriously. If I could spend my days, time...wait...wait...I said I was just kidding...I'm just...kidd

Uh-hem. Move along folks. Nothing to see here.

eddie willers said...

get all the chimp change revenue from California.

What a wonderful typo

rhhardin said...

Youtube deleted a video of mine because it suddenly got 4000 views from somewhere. This is a violation of their terms of use. Apparently it involved driving traffic artificially to your video for ad revenue of some kind.

That I don't have ads, and have no idea why a video of tractors cutting hay is popular, didn't affect their judgment.

All judgment starts from we are right and you are wrong.

I was allowed to repost the video with a new url, with a warning. Warning about what, I have no idea.

gadfly said...

So, the lesson here is that if we fill Althouse's posts with F-bombs in the comments, we get no more Google Ads. We can do the same thing for any websites that subscribe to Google Ads (as exposed by Ghostery, which is unusable as a permanent filter, but might serve to find Google Ads). I believe it is safe to assume that all Blogger sites are populated with Google Ads.

rehajm said...

President L'BJ' is confusing the algorithms!

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

If that's the discussion I recall, it was played on NPR! I remember it vividly -- LBJ complaining to his tailor that his pants were too tight around the "bunghole" and could he let them out a little? And the poor tailor on the other end stammering his assent.

Clayton Hennesey said...

Google is Skynet and pure evil. Like a company controlling 60% of human sensory input, Google has enslaved the pathway to information itself.

Ann Althouse said...

What the hell is "chimp change"?

Is that what happens in "Planet of the Apes"?

mockturtle said...

I often wonder if a future group of brave souls will release themselves from internet & cell phone tyranny by starting a new civilization where people--GASP!--talk to each other in person, buy items in stores manned by actual human beings and limit the breadth of their worries to their own small but easily managed society. Or maybe these technologies will be rendered inoperative somehow forcing the issue. Sounds scary but, hey, it could happen!

Ann Althouse said...

"Ann: It appears you have sold your soul to Google for a few bucks. They now feel they can censor your content..."

Well, I didn't take anything out. If they cut me off, they cut me off.

Meanwhile, advertising is the standard economic model of the web. If it doesn't work, how will writers get paid? Make these things into books and sell them?

Ann Althouse said...

You think Google is evil, how about LBJ?

tim in vermont said...

Your internet ad has come to my attention... Buy her out, boys!

Ann Althouse said...

@Michelle Dulak Thomson

Click on my link. You'll get the full text plus a link to the audio. I chose not to reprint it here (for the obvious reason).

Ignorance is Bliss said...

tim in vermont said...

Size may not matter, but the guys with the big ones are sure proud.

I'll bet the doctor had no trouble guessing LBJ's gender.

Clayton Hennesey said...

Professor Althouse, explain the ways LBJ could conceivably be stopped from doing whatever he wanted to do.

Now explain the ways Google can conceivably be stopped from doing anything it wants to do, politically or any other way. Remember, unlike LBJ, Google lives wherever in the world it archives itself at any given moment.

By the way, did I mention that this entire blog and its Google cache archive can be memory holed at will without your having the slightest recourse, legal, political, social, economic, or in any other way.

You serve Google, Google doesn't serve you.

lemondog said...

How very crotchety of them....

Etienne said...

"chimp change"

It was a typo, although "chimp" is pronounced "chump" in French (chum-pahn-zay).

I see that the urban dictionary has it:

"chimp" People who look at their digital camera screens and make monkey-like noises.

I guess in connection with "change", it is people who look at the accumulating coins per click, and make monkey-like noises at the payments. All the while downgrading their peasant reading level so as to not insult the Alphabet warlord.

robother said...

"She quoted LBJ saying BALLS! BALLS! Heh, Heh, Heh."

Always wondered what Beavis and Butthead's adult career would be: Content reviewer for Google censors makes perfect sense.

glenn said...

On to the important question. Did ol Elbie put them pants on one leg at a time?

rhhardin said...

Vivienne Westwood, Tom Ford shoes and an O.B tampon

- Amy Schumer to a red carpet interviewer, what are you wearing. I don't know how the interviewer reacted, which would be the joke.

Which means ohne Bindungen, if I recall from the 60s.

Periods are creeping into scripts.

The Proposal, Sandra Bullock, all those midnight tampon runs will have been for nothing. Establishes close working relationship.

Some other DVD, woman hostage claims her period is starting so she needs to use the restroom, "Can't you hold it?" "It doesn't work that way." Plot point escape-enabling.

Some other DVD, women just dumped in stall crying, asked what's wrong, "I'm always emotional when my period starts." Serves a plot point establishing she's not pregnant then.

rhhardin said...

I wish I had written down the ratings disclaimer on some DVD I watched a few months ago - now forgotten - where every low and depraved thing possible was pretty much listed.

DanTheMan said...

>>What the hell is "chimp change"?

That's the operation for those who don't identify as cis-hominid.

YoungHegelian said...

"Bunghole"?

Would a Texan of LBJ's generation use the word "bunghole" as opposed to "asshole"? Is bunghole just LBJ's way of "being polite" with the tailor, & not using a ruder word (as if that ever stopped LBJ...)?

And pants that cut into your scrotum are not a joking matter. In ye days of yore, when the better sort of gentleman had his pants custom-tailored, he was asked if he preferred to dress "to the right or to the left", meaning on which side did he deposit his scrotum when he dressed. Male genitalia just doesn't lend itself to clothes designed around the principle of bilateral symmetry.

Brando said...

Quoting LBJ is basically asking to get censored. That man was filthy!

But he also had some bad traits.

mockturtle said...

YG:Male genitalia just doesn't lend itself to clothes designed around the principle of bilateral symmetry.

Let's bring back codpieces! :-)

khesanh0802 said...

Ann: Note that there are several other people here who do not like the in-column ads. You said I was the only who complained. So that confirms my marketing saw that one explicit complaint indicates many in the bushes.

You had a model where those who were willing to support you could " subscribe", which I did. That model was very much like making your blog into a book and selling it.

The in-column ads are getting more irrelevant and more distracting by the day. Google is slowly taking over your blog to the extent,now, that they feel free to censor it. Instead of reasonably intelligent and sophisticated people reading and commenting you now have some mid-level geek deciding what you can or can not publish. Woe! Woe!

lemondog said...

LBJ ordering pants

mockturtle said...

Lemondog, thanks for the link. That video is priceless! In spite of his corrupt politics and personal misbehavior, I always found LBJ's earthiness rather appealing. The belch in the middle of the call was very Lyndon.

rehajm said...

With Adblock on Safari you se no in column ads...

khesanh0802 said...

@ rehajm Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now I can read Ann's blog in peace. I might even consider resubscribing!

mockturtle said...

I have Adblock Plus on Firefox.

Robert said...


It looks like Blogger sites may be published under different TLDs (country names). Maybe there is a different threshold of "service violations" for different countries. What plays in Peoria may not plan in India?

I checked my blogger account which is also accessible with ".in" and I am trying to modify the settings to redirect ".in" to ".com". I just made the modification however it has not worked. Maybe it takes a day or two to work.

Settings > Search Preferences > Errors and Redirections > Custom Redirects

Robert

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Ann, got it. "For obvious reasons," heh.

LBJ is the last president of whom we could get that unconscious but earthy humor. WJC might possibly qualify, except that his humor, earthy or otherwise, was invariably conscious.

Unknown said...

For what it's worth, when I was in Italy last week, your blog's URL ended in .it, and I believe I got a legal warning in Italian that your site uses cookies. Probably in Italy, though, anything goes in terms of content.

tim maguire said...

With the exception of a couple days last week, you've been blocked by the IT filters at work as pornography.

mockturtle said...

With the exception of a couple days last week, you've been blocked by the IT filters at work as pornography.

We can probably blame Laslo for that. ;-)

jerpod said...

This has nothing to do with that, except ordering pants (and maybe the LBJ video). Funny, because I just watched this five minutes ago, and now a pants ordering thread!

http://youtu.be/_8enIDEKrzA

J. D. said...

All that fuss over LBJ? Is hate to see what would happen if you reprinted some of Warren G. Harding's love letters.

Sydney said...

Find the ads a little annoying. They slow down the blog upload. I've pretty much stopped reading Instapundit because of the nearly pornographic ads on the side bar. All clickbait mostly, but 1) they make the site very slow to upload and 2) I really don't like porn, not even the clickbait soft porn photos. Hope you don't go there.

tim in vermont said...

I disable adblock on the sites I feel I get value from, unless the ads are just too obnoxious. I don't mind the ads here, so far. I have turned ads on and off on Insty, based on whether they autoplay or not, mostly. Right now I have it off there, he seems to have them under control. Setting up the site with a subscription where you can opt out of ads sounds great, but it also sounds like a capital investment that will likely never get paid back with ad blockers widely available. I am not sure I would pay a subscription, but I do buy my Amazon through here whenever I remember, which is usually unless I am on my smartphone.

Sydney said...

Which ad blocker would those of you who use them recommend?

Anonymous said...

Sadly, I learned a new term today, "in-column ads." Well, along with many others here, I find that these in-column ads create a very confusing blog experience. I never know if what I'm seeing is part of a blog entry or an ad. And yeah, it really slows it down.

If you want to make a little money after you retire, get a part-time job. Don't monetize the blog. And don't piss on blogging like this. I ran a blog for five years and never asked for one nickel nor had one ad anywhere.

Right now your blog looks more like a series of billboards with a little writing in between -- a blogboard, I guess.

Anonymous said...

Maybe "billblog" is better: a$l$t$h$o$u$s$e. A monetized clipping service. Hey kids, see if you can find the original content!

Anonymous said...

And Ann, you're not a writer. You're a clipper. You clip a quote, maybe write a few sentences, and then let the commenters debate the issue, which is fine and why the comments pages are the best part of your blog. But a writer? No, there's no sustained engagement that real writers face.

Rusty said...

Ann Althouse said...
"You think Google is evil, how about LBJ? "

Comcast has em both beat. Assholes.