#Forkgoogle: Crypto Community Pushes Back Against Censorship

[Mercury]

A petition taking aim at Google for censoring cryptocurrency-related content across its platforms is gaining traction on Twitter.

#ForkGoogle’s memorandum accuses Google and its subsidiary YouTube of waging “campaigns of suppression against Bitcoin and blockchain industry for years.”

The post seeks to inspire a coming together of blockchain companies and stakeholders to push back against Google's censorship.

Google’s silent war on crypto

The memorandum accuses Google of censoring cryptocurrency content through a variety of means — including blocking ad campaigns and removing apps related to crypto from Google Play and deleting or restricting access to information about cryptocurrencies.

The post describes Google’s censorship of crypto content as comprising a fundamental disregard for human rights by denying universal access to information.

#ForkGoogle calls for migration to distributed platforms

The post calls for the crypto community to boycott Google’s services and advocates a coordination migration to alternative platforms that operate using distributed technologies — citing decentralized blogging platform Steemit and open source web browser Brave as examples:

    “We should support alternative solutions more, attract investment into this sector of cryptocurrency economy, and incentivize the development of new competitive products.”

The author hopes that the community can force Google to engage in public discussion regarding its policies concerning cryptocurrency.

Google purges crypto content

On March 2, Google’s launched a new front its crypto-purge, removing Android applications for many prominent crypto news outlets from its Play Store — including that of Cointelegraph. At press time, Google’s apparent ban on crypto news apps was still in effect.

At the end of 2019, Google suddenly took down hundreds of cryptocurrency-related videos on YouTube. Despite Google claiming that mass-deletions were an “error,” many crypto YouTubers have complained about erratic view counts, deleted videos, and account suspensions throughout 2020.

Google launches campaign against crypto in 2018

During March 2018, Google announced a forthcoming policy prohibiting ads for “cryptocurrencies and related content.” The hostility appeared to have been sparked by pressure from Canada’s Binary Options Task Force and the U.S. Federal Investigation Bureau who directly approached Facebook and Google executives prior to the crypto ad bans.

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