This is probably an issue I should have addressed ten or so years ago. It angered me then but now, it's absolutely infuriating. Not that I actually expect anything proactive to be done, of course. But hey, avalanches start with one pebble rolling into places that a pebble doesn't belong. So who knows?
It's about Google's AdSense program. And how it's impossible to regain monetization if you so much as look at a YouTube video the wrong way.
So it was a pretty good relationship, I thought.
And then, a little over a decade ago, my AdSense account was disabled.
I know exactly how it happened, too. Because it was eventually admitted to me.
I had (emphasis on "had") a friend who earnestly believed that he/she was doing me a favor, when they repeatedly reloaded this blog wherever they happened to be, whether at home or at work or wherever. I had no idea this was happening. If I had, I would have absolutely requested that they stop.
That's why I was banned from AdSense. Because of a single third party's misbehavior.
It could have happened to anyone. It could happen to you, if someone is holding a grudge against you and wants to very easily cut off a source of potentially sizable income.
Well, I appealed the disabling. It was rejected. And that's it. There is no appealing anymore. Google tosses your @$$ out to the curb. It's decision is final. And creating a new AdSense account is not allowed.
This should not be.
There are a myriad of reasons and many of them ridiculous why a person using Google could be demonetized (or worse, have their content deleted completely). It does no one... including Google... any good. It chokes off the Internet from being a place where information is available and flows freely across an impartial playing field. From a business standpoint banning users from AdSense for capricious and frivolous activity only drives those users to other competing advertising services. Those aren't much of a threat, right now. But their virtual circulations are growing. And it would not be surprising if ten years from now they are the ones who are reaping the rewards that come with giving content creators reasonable carte blanche, without fear of reprisal or negligent administration.
In the course of the past few months this blog has been gaining back a loyal readership that hasn't been had since before I walked away from blogging for the better part of three years, during which I traveled across America in a journey of self-discovery. It would be good to have AdSense again, if for no other reason than to have ads on display, for sake of aesthetics. It would be good to have it back period, it having been disabled for activity which was not the fault at all of the publisher himself.
Google execs, I doubt you will read this. But I'm not going to let this continue without expressing my ire and frustration about your abominable banning policies. They need to be and should be examined anew and... I believe so anyway... be revised. Because as things are now and have been for some time, the banning policies are blatantly unfair to many of those who are generating fresh material on a constant basis.
You are not gaining anything by exiling content creators from using your platform to earn a little cash not just for them, but for yourself.
If anyone at Google is reading this and wishes to contact me about this, I invite them to write to me at theknightshift@gmail.com. I would be very appreciative of that effort and dialoguing with you about this. And it probably should go without saying that I would also appreciate a review of my own AdSense account, and be told in no uncertain terms why it was banned. I would be so bold as to suggest that many if not most users who have been banned deserve a proper hearing. But that's what needs to happen.
Content creators should not be penalized for the miscreant actions of a third party acting inappropriately.
Come on Google, don't do evil. Don't let bad people get away with hurting the good ones.
