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I get you have pages for those words since you are running a dictionary, but do I understand you were running ads for pages with those words specific?


Why should it matter? It’s a dictionary, words are in it. What will they find objectionable is utterly random and should not be a factor... what people find objectionable enough to hardcode exceptions for can be rather idiosyncratic https://twitter.com/techdrgn/status/1359221506165805060?s=21 for example.

More importantly, the issue is that there’s no recourse in these cases. It’s downright stupid that you can report a dictionary for this and get them permanently banned. If the issue is don’t run ads on naught word pages then google should make this list public and stop ruining businesses by practicing “I’ll know it when I see it” style moderation by algorithmic bots without human oversight.


If you are trying to sell a dictionary I see no reason why a company should allow you to advertise on the word "rape" to do so.


That's like saying Oxford Dictionary shouldn't be able to make money off their dictionary because it contains the word rape.

It's a damn definition, not an article or essay on rape. Facts shouldn't be censored because someone feels it might offend their delicate senses.


I don't mean that.

I mean it's fine to have those pages. Google also ranks them for those keywords.

But I can understand why a company won't allow someone to specifically run ads on those keywords. Like the above comment about ebay talks about.

I'm not sure whether that happened in this case or not, but that was my question


15 or so years ago, eBay appeared to be buying adverts for all noun searches on Google. Certainly when I searched for “plutonium” and “antimatter” and a few other ridiculous keywords, I saw ads telling me I could “buy it cheap on eBay”. I tried this experiment in response to news stories criticising eBay for the same with the nouns “women” and “slaves”.


Did you think they were actually selling plutonium?

This is the same problem in a different skin: words to not equal intent. When we only judge by words we restrict good faith information and promote bad faith euphimisms that do real harm.


I would guess they didn't put different adds on different words, so, those words had the exact same adds as every other word.




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