Friday, October 26, 2007

BlogRush Bigotry: Freethinker, Humanist, and Atheist Blogs are "Hate Speech"

So I arrive back in country yesterday and finally jump on the net to read some of my favorite blogs and start working on a couple of posts I've been considering. Checking my email, I discover that Blogrush has inactivated my account with them. Not a problem. I was planning on deleting their silly "widget" from my blog anyway since it 1) hasn't really brought me any traffic, and 2) Google Adsense doesn't like it.

But the email I received from Blogrush said I was "inactivated" because of "[i]nappropriate Content Or Advertising: Hate Speech or Anti-Racial" content.

What!? "Hate speech?" "Anti-racial?"

Clearly, the dumb asses running Blogrush are clueless. If you're still hosting their "widget," you might do good to ditch it. Not only does it not work (and that's according to many, many blogs out there ... just google it), but if you use Adsense, you risk not getting a payout. I emailed Google Adsense just before leaving last week and their reply was in my inbox just under Blogrush's inactivation notice. According to Google Adsense:

While we're unable to comment on any particular program or service, we do not recommend the use of any program that artificially drives traffic to your site. Use of these programs may lead to activity on your site that artificially inflates an advertiser's cost or a publisher's earnings, which would violate the AdSense program policies (https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) and Terms and Conditions (https://www.google.com/adsense/terms).
I'm guessing what Blogrush didn't like about my blog is that it questioned superstition and challenges religious delusion. Since I've never made any racial comments or even discussed race or racial issues, it seems clear that this is their reason. This is supported by their failure to include channels for science or freethought, two HUGE blogospheric realms with significant numbers of interested bloggers and readers. This might lead one to believe that Blogrush is run by the superstitious who are offended at having their superstitions questioned or criticized.

Not a problem. I'm not interested in any service that puts my Adsense pay-outs at risk. This blog doesn't contribute to a large degree to my Adsense account yet, but it doesn't need to. My other blog gets about 1200 hits/day and pays well. And the ads are not intrusive nor blatant. They're simple links like I use here.

I advise anyone that is using the Blogrush pyramid scheme to drop them if they also use Adsense. If there's any doubt, email Adsense yourself if you don't trust the quote above. Not only is Blogrush a risk to your payouts, but their classification of atheist blogs as "hate speech" marks them as bigots as well.

UPDATE: I've added the following filter to my AdBlock plugin for FireFox: http://widget.blogrush.com* If you use FireFox, you should truly get the AdBlock plugin. If you have it, just copy the url in above and paste it after clicking "New Filter." That way, you'll never have to look at another silly BlogRush Widget again.

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