Blue, who writes a regular column for the San Francisco Gate, said the AdWords that appear next to her text often promote websites contrary to her sex-positive editorial style.
“Take a look at a few of my columns — especially the porn entries — and you'll be treated to a fat serving of sexually shaming ‘porn addiction — get help’ text ads, which, of course, run totally against the grain of the pro-porn message I'm dishing out,” Blue wrote in her most recent column.
According to Blue, Google has a reputation among many website operators for pairing the wrong ads with sexually-oriented content.
Enter transgender, queer site Red Handed Porn, which told Blue that Google rejected its choices for brand identifiers because they smacked of “teen porn concepts.”
Boots Boccaleone of Red Handed Porn said the site uses Google for part of its advertising campaign, despite the problems.
“We have been having trouble with them since the very beginning, because while they allow really offensive words like 'she-male' to flourish, they won't allow us to use the words that many transfolk use to identify themselves: 'transboi,' 'trannyboy,' 'transgrrrl,' etc.” Boccaleone said. “I have contacted them, letting them know that a search within Google will show that these words are never used in child pornography and always refer to transgendered adults.”
According to Boccaleone, the AdWords system is in need of an overhaul in terms of cultural sensitivity.
“They don't seem to offer any recourse or even a viable forum for response,” Boccaleone said. “In fact, they seem to have the attitude that we can love it or leave it. That dictatorial attitude would be fine in a smaller business with less influence over the Internet, but Google has become a force of Internet nature. In addition to delivering their ads within their own search engine, the ads are distributed over a content delivery network and appear in all sorts of websites.”
Google’s terms of service for its AdWords product forbid users from advertising child pornography, non-consensual material and teen pornography.
