October 11, 2008
Donations to Yes-On-8 are Accidentally Going to Tasteful Gay Erotica
Update: Complaints about the content of ads can be sent to Google here.
The "people" behind Prop 8 -- the anti-marriage amendment -- may or may not be up to something sneaky. We observed yesterday that their ads were showing up on Fog City Journal -- a site that, we suspected, wouldn't want anything to do with that sort of degenerate advertising. We were also surprised to see them on the otherwise-reputable FiveThirtyEight.com.
And now this: a gay blog (very gay) has accused the Prop 8 campaign of purposely buying Google ads on gay sites. This has resulted in bizarre situations such as the one pictured at left: where yes-on-8 messages appear next to a plea to defeat the ban.
We doubt that this is on purpose. If Prop 8 really wanted to spend its ad money effectively, why would it buy ads on sites where their lies are completely unwelcome? They probably intended to target sites that mention homosex, not sites that actively celebrate it; and because the ad placement is all automated, these little faux pas happened.
We're not sure who should be more uncomfortable here -- the nice bloggers whose sites are being sullied by deceitful, discriminatory advertisements; or the anti-marriage donors whose money is going into the pockets of gays and their allies.
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Maybe they subscribe to the notion "Help stamp out gay sex; legalize gay marriage"?
DU is having the same problem. I believe it is teh result of poor Google AdSense filtering.
Click the ads!!! They pay per click.
"people"???
When did sfist turn into a left wing political blog?
I don't think it "has."
You don't have to be left-wing to be opposed to government intervention in peoples' private lives. In fact, that sounds kinda right-wing to me.
Actually this is a good thing if they're wasting their money "advertising" to people who are, we all assume, dead-set against the measure! So maybe I'll go to one of these sites and click on the ad. Just doing my part to waste even a tiny portion of their funds.
Remember folks: the Mormons are behind Prop 8. You shouldn't need any other reason to vote against it.
@missiondweller: at least mattymatt was kind enough to use "people." I'd have chosen words like "lying, hate-filled bigots" myself.
We had to deal with this thing all the freakin' time at Gay.com -- it's just adsense calling up "related" keywords -- and it took forever and a million meetings with google to get them to realize that "pray away the gay" was not something gay.com users wanted as peanut butter in with their twink sandwiches.