WRITTEN BY: JD HEYES FEBRUARY 24, 2017
TRUMP.NEWS
Within a few hours of filing a petition at Whitehouse.gov demanding that Google ends its censorship of NaturalNews.com search results, signatures blasted past 16,000 as Americans fed up with corporate suppression of the truth make their voices heard.
Google, which controls 67.5% of internet searches in the United States is attempting to silence any voice that doesn’t coincide with their political views. This incidentally targets some of the biggest voices in alternative media, such as NaturalNews.com and Infowars.com.
This week Google wiped 140,000 Naturalnews.com articles from its database, prohibiting individuals from viewing the site’s webpages if searched. Google sent no prior warning. Natural News has stated that they follow all Google terms of service rules and that they do not condone or endorse any techniques that may manipulate Natural News in the search engines.
This censorship of the Independent Media is a blatant attack on the first amendment rights of users.
Natural News founder/editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, noted that the petition became necessary after his site was arbitrarily singled out for censorship
based on an arcane advertising rule that a) does not appear to apply to other websites; and b) was based on a
single post at Blogs.NaturalNews.com from three years ago. Adam’s says the reason he was given for Google’s actions is questionable, at best:
This morning, I was contacted by a Google technical person who directly emailed Natural News. According to the email, a Google techie found an obscure third party advertising script running on a tiny number of articles published 3+ years ago under the blogs.naturalnews.com subdomain, where content is posted by outside bloggers. (Many websites host similar blogs, including the NY Times.) Google has so far provided us with ONE URL that they claim is a violation. (Yet they banned 140,000+.)
Just to be clear, this script was NOT running on the www.NaturalNews.com primary domain, it was not part of any in-house NaturalNews articles, and it was not even recent. It was from years ago.
This third party script, identified as invoking “cpxcenter.com”, has been so far identified [in] a grand total of 13 blog posts that were posted from 2013 – 2014 under the subdomain blogs.naturalnews.com.
Using this as their excuse, Google blacklisted the entire NaturalNews.com domain, including all 140,000+ pages of content that contained no such third party scripts, thereby “silencing” Natural News content by invoking an obscure, dated, barely-visible technical issue.
Interestingly, as Adams reported, the very same code that was used to punish Natural News is
also running on Google’s own BlogSpot network, which is incredible hypocrisy – but also which appears to validate our belief that our site was delisted in Google’s search results as punishment for being a reliable reporter of the truth.
While we are humbled by the overwhelming support we have received and are quick to offer readers our thanks, we ask that you continue to help us keep the pressure on Google and
sign the petition demanding a response from the Trump administration over this blatant violation of our rights to free speech and potential violations of various commerce and trade regulations.
One other thing that Google, which also claims to be a media company, might want to consider: The Trump White House has not treated anyone well who has attempted to push fake news while burying truthful, honest reporting no matter where it comes from. Google execs should ask the crybabies at
The New York Times,
CNN,
Buzzfeed, and
Politico how they feel about being shut out of press gaggles at the White House. The current administration, for once, has made it clear it has no use for fake news and censorship of honest reporting and considers the Trump-hating establishment media to be the
true opposition party to the administration.
J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.
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