Google pulled its ad from the allegedly disinformation website AC24 | iRADIO

Disinformation websites, alternative or conspiracy media – mobile operators and the NIX.cz association blocked twenty of the websites labeled as such at the beginning of the war at the request of the government and military intelligence in 2022.

The operators of these sites have rarely defended the decision, as they often hide in anonymity. The exception is the operator of the website AC24.cz, Ondřej Geršl, who sued T-Mobile through his company, who, according to the lawsuit, damaged him by blocking. The district court for Prague 4 did not comply with the lawsuit, but the municipal court overturned the decision in March. According to him, T-Mobile violated net neutrality rules by blocking the site.

At the same time, the judgments handed down so far offer at least a partial insight not only into what similar sites earn, but also into what sums they are able to obtain for their operation.

It is no secret – in the past, the iROZHLAS.cz server has repeatedly reported on this – that the income of these websites comes primarily from traffic, which their operators can monetize through various advertising systems.

And according to the law firm that represents the AC24 website in court, it was the restriction of traffic that caused the most damage.

“The blocking significantly damaged our Client, considering the fact that the number of visitors to the website was reduced by the blocking itself. After the unblocking, attendance had an upward trend,” explains Adam Císařovský in response for the law firm.

As can be seen from the documents that the lawyers submitted to the court and which the judgment cites (to be read at the end of the article), his income comes largely from advertising with the American company Google, from which the site receives tens of thousands of crowns per month. If the amounts correspond and what exactly was the damage caused by blocking the website, the law firm did not want to comment, because “the issue of lost profits will still be the subject of another judicial review.”

Google states that it combats certain types of misinformation, such as those related to elections, covid-19, and climate change, in its services. In last year’s ad safety report, the company said it had removed ads from nearly 400,000 websites for violations.

The editors specifically asked Google about the AC24 website, the company stated in a brief answer that it had blocked the display of advertisements through its advertising network on this page for violating the terms.

Tens of thousands a month

But Google’s advertising system is not the only one on the AC24 website. The website also monetizes its traffic through about a dozen other domestic and foreign advertising systems. But the judgments only mention them very briefly or not at all.

On the AC24 page, other technology companies also have a code for displaying advertising, for example Geozo from Cyprus, Facebook from Meta or LinkedIn, which is in turn operated by Microsoft. It is not clear from the court’s decision whether and what funds the website earns thanks to these systems.

However, the decision indicates that the website operator earned small or medium tens of thousands of crowns per month from online advertising.

As the iROZHLAS.cz server pointed out some time ago, the scripts that the pages use to display advertisements are also used to collect information about their visitors. These then end up in the databases of technology companies outside of Europe, where legislation on privacy protection such as GDPR is often missing.

Advertising on disinfo websites

Two years ago, the iROZHLAS.cz server also analyzed other sites labeled as disinformation. For them, the number of tracking advertising tools is very similar and their composition does not differ much.

It was because of the claims about the high income of the conspirators from the operations of their websites that the state repeatedly came up with a strategy to prevent this business. The idea of ​​cutting off these pages from advertising – perhaps at least from the state one – comes up regularly. Which, according to the Ministry for Regional Development, has already partially happened.

But the most significant intervention was their complete blocking in the spring of 2022. And that was based on the government’s appeal, which was followed by a letter from military intelligence. It was supposed to prevent the spread of “false and misleading information in cyberspace, which serves the aggressor to lie and manipulate the people of the Czech Republic” shortly after the start of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

In a document previously published by iROZHLAS.cz, the reporters assured that internet providers would not violate the European regulation on net neutrality by blocking them. “The state has the right to defend its integrity against disinformation to which its citizens are exposed,” Military Intelligence wrote in the letter. However, as the court stated in March, there was a violation of net neutrality.

We are not the most truthful

Moreover, according to his lawyers, Ondřej Geršl insists that he is not spreading false information. He responded to the questions of the server iROZHLAS.cz. “Our client is aware that his website is labeled as disinformation by someone, he does not agree with this label in any way. Our client does not knowingly spread false and conspiratorial content,” Císařovský wrote, adding that Geršl does not deny a similar opinion to anyone, he just does not agree to someone blocking his website because of it.

However, it was Geršl himself who admitted in an interview to the American server CodaStory.com that his site does not avoid false information. “Look, our website is not the most truthful or trustworthy. We don’t want our readers to be dependent on just one source of information. They should be able to compare information from multiple sources,” he said.

Judgment of the District Court for Prague 4, which names income from advertising on the AC24.cz website:

Jan Cibulka, Tomáš Pika

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