Google Threatens to De-Monetize The Federalist Over Comments Section

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Google has reportedly threatened to de-monetize the conservative publication The Federalist over its comments section. This is kind of a bizarre story, so here's the sequence as I understand it.

1) NBC News reported that The Federalist "will no longer be able to generate revenue from any advertisements served by Google Ads." (They also reported this happened to the site ZeroHedge.)

2) Scott Nover, a reporter for AdWeek, reached out to Google, which told him that NBC's story was inaccurate, that Federalist is not yet banned (but would be without swift action), and that it was over their comments section rather than editorial copy:

3) The Federalist appears to have swiftly removed its comments section. Look at the bottom of this cached version of a June 2nd story, versus what it looks like now.

4) NBC updated their story with the following note: "After publication of this story, Google added that it takes into account all of the content on a website including comments to determine if a policy violation has occurred, which is where the policy violations occurred."

This story has all types of slippery slopes. If Google is going to punish sites for their comment sections, couldn't that become a siren for trolls on both sides to take a flamethrower in the comment sections of their political rivals' sites? Further, the comments section on Google-owned YouTube is notorious for being as disgusting a sewer as any out there. This policy pushes accountability on others that I doubt they'd want on themselves.

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Ryan Glasspiegel grew up in Connecticut, graduated from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and lives in Chicago. Before OutKick, he wrote for Sports Illustrated and The Big Lead. He enjoys expensive bourbon and cheap beer.