• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer, May 15, 2017

In its running battle with Facebook for the hearts and minds (and content) of online publishers, Google is unveiling a new, more lenient policy for publishers that run afoul of its content restrictions. 

Google is moderating its prior relatively inflexible response, which threatened to put publishers out of business for minor infractions. Google revealed the new system in a blog post published Monday.

Under the old policy, if a publisher posted content on a page which violated Google’s policies, including pornography, hate speech, or incitements to violence, Google’s AdSense service might respond by stripping all ads from the publisher’s site — not just the offending page — cutting off the publisher’s main source of ad revenues.

Under the new approach, Google will remove ads only from the offending content pages, leaving other inventory untouched.

In the post, Google’s director of sustainable ads Scott Spencer explained the move will allow the platform to enforce ad sanctions more narrowly and precisely, although extreme measures are still on the table.

“We’ll still use site-level actions, but only as needed. And when it's necessary, such as in the case of egregious or persistent violations, we'll still terminate publishers," he said. "Altogether, this means fewer disruptions for publishers.”

While adopting a more lenient stance on penalties for inappropriate content, Google also plans to enforce the new rules at the page level more thoroughly, meaning some publishers may see ads pulled from questionable content for the first time. Because of the shift to tighter enforcement at the page level, Google expects no net gain in revenue from the new policy.

According to figures previously released by Google, last year its enforcers on AdSense gave the boot to over 100,000 publishers for publishing inappropriate content.

Google’s YouTube video platform continues to be embroiled in controversy in the U.S. and abroad for allowing users to post a variety of offensive content, including extremist incitement and hate speech.

Earlier this month, a report by Britain’s Parliament bashed Google for making money off such videos through advertising: “It is shocking that Google failed to perform basic due diligence regarding advertising on YouTube paid for by reputable companies and organizations which appeared alongside videos containing inappropriate and unacceptable content, some of which were created by terrorist organizations.”