Google, Lord of the internet, has been the centre of some controversy of late. Well, of always. But I digress.
The internet hegemon recently removed “Turn off the Blue Light” from AdWords, claiming the site represented an egregious violation of its terms of service. According to the search engine gone global superpower, the site violated its agreement by “promoting sexual services”.
Fully aware of the irony, I googled Turn off the Blue Light. Also, “egregious”.
Turn off the Blue Light is a campaign calling for the respect and protection of sex workers basic rights. The site calls for “rights based health and social services, freedom from abuse and discrimination, and self determination for sex workers.”
In an effort to sort out the confusion, I took the liberty of attempting to solicit sexual favours from the campaign’s organizers — that’s called investigative journalism. So far, no takers.
It appears that our shadowy overlords have fallen prey to the misconception that all content involving sex workers must be illegal. Of course, even a cursory inspection of the site reveals that no such solicitation is taking place.
Our supreme leaders at Google, in light of their position, have a responsibility to be more judicious with their policies instead of simply condemning a site because it has the word “sex” — which I also googled — on it.
And we all know who that sounds like.