YouTube blocks advertisers from using terms like “Black Lives Matter” to find videos to advertise against but was letting them use phrases like “White power”
with a tiny fraction of the budget and workforce Google has at their disposal—are able to discover how hate groups continue to operate on these platforms, while the company itself somehow remains clueless. 🙄 https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
The Markup
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the human-readable failure mode of the secret blocklist The Markup documented a day earlier: Google's keyword filter worked less than a third of the time, and when it failed, it failed asymmetrically — suppressing 'Black Lives Matter' as an ad-targeting term while letting 'White power' through.
The asymmetry is not an isolated glitch. Google's Ad Exchange was already demonetizing pages that merely mention race and LGBTQ rights as 'dangerous or derogatory', and the 2017 ad crisis showed that when YouTube's ad controls break down, advertisers gain leverage to demand changes on their terms. Together they sketch a moderation system whose errors consistently run in one direction.
First-order effects
Advertisers who want to reach coverage of racial-justice topics on YouTube cannot target it by keyword, while hate-group-adjacent phrases remain open for campaign targeting — directly distorting which content gets ad dollars right now.
Google faces renewed advertiser scrutiny of its ad-controls tooling, the same dynamic that followed the 2017 ad mess when brands demanded YouTube fix placement and monetization controls.
Second-order effects
Brands and agencies may respond by pulling targeting decisions in-house or demanding third-party verification of keyword filters, shifting spend and negotiating power away from Google's self-reported controls.
Creators covering race and LGBTQ issues — already squeezed by Ad Exchange demonetization of mere mentions — lose a further revenue channel as advertisers are structurally blocked from finding their videos, pushing them toward platforms or direct monetization outside YouTube.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, ad-platform moderation will be treated as a bias and civil-rights problem rather than a brand-safety engineering problem, inviting regulator and legislative attention to how keyword blocklists are built and audited.
YouTube's monetization system — from demonetization-as-punishment to keyword filtering — increasingly functions as an unelected editorial layer deciding which speech is commercially viable, decoupling moderation from the creator-facing rules it claims to enforce.
The trend: Platform ad-moderation is drifting from a brand-safety tool into a de facto content policy whose errors — as with the Ad Exchange's demonetization of race coverage — consistently suppress civil-rights speech while missing hate speech.
New from @leonyin & me: We discovered a secret block list inside of Google's ad portal. It blocked advertisers from placing ads on videos about “Black Lives Matter” but permitted placing ads on videos about “All Lives Matter” and “White Lives Matter” https://themarkup.org/...
“When we began our investigation, Google Ads only blocked a third of them for searches. Now it blocks more than 80 percent, adding dozens of terms to its blocklist, including “Black in Tech,” “Black excellence,” and “antiracism."" https://themarkup.org/...
NEW from @leonyin and @asankin: Last year YouTube's CEO said Black lives matter. But we found that its ad portal makes it more difficult for advertisers to find social and racial justice videos by blocking keywords including Black Lives Matter. https://themarkup.org/... https://t…
Wanna advertise on YouTube around Black Lives Matter or Black Power? Nope. How about White Lives Matter or White Power? Yep. https://themarkup.org/... https://twitter.com/...
New series from @LeonYin and @ASankin about the ways that different keywords are blocked or demoted by google's algorithms. Much of this is done to appease advertisers. Don't you think we deserve a public interest internet? https://themarkup.org/...
YouTube's keyword blocklist is full of holes. @TheMarkup's latest investigation looks at how Google Ads' hate filters are failing. https://themarkup.org/...
The Markup's reports this week from @LeonYin and @ASankin have been killer and watching Google absolutely shit itself across two stories is something to behold. Part 1: https://t.co/jyWADEAPqV Part 2: https://t.co/tiSPeRk4zs
YouTube keyword blocklist lets lots of hate terms through. But it blocks “Black Lives Matter” and racial & social justice keywords. @TheMarkup's latest investigation looks at the disparity in Google Ads' filters. https://themarkup.org/...
Hard to have a more clear example of where this company stands than them blocking anti racist keywords while keeping up hateful ones. https://twitter.com/...
“Google Has a Secret Blocklist that Hides YouTube Hate Videos from Advertisers-But It's Full of Holes”, @themarkup reports. I'd love to see others replicate this elsewhere, e.g. India, maybe something for @medianama or @newslaundry? Suspect bigger holes. https://themarkup.org/...
Time and time again, journalists —with a tiny fraction of the budget and workforce Google has at their disposal—are able to discover how hate groups continue to operate on these platforms, while the company itself somehow remains clueless. 🙄 https://twitter.com/...