You vill blog our way, or not at all!
Expat at Large pointed out the fact that the freedom loving people at Google used their powerful business position to shut down a blog it did not like. Mango Sauce is a blog about living and loving in Thailand and has the latest info on nightlife, farang life and bar girl scams. Perhaps for those of you who don’t have a taste for that sort of thing its a welcome development. For myself and others who are connoisseurs of the Asian experience, this is a revolting development.
Mango Sauce is dead and Google is responsible.
This week, a junior Google official decided (wrongly) that Mango Sauce was offensive and arbitrarily pulled the plug on its advertising – leaving the site dead in the water. This may come as quite a shock to 100,000 regular readers and hundreds of local advertisers. It certainly shocked me.
The guy has clearly blundered but there’s no right of appeal and Google’s global stranglehold on Internet advertising means that there’s no alternative source of
funding available either. On the face of it, Mango Sauce is finished.
This not a Blogger or blogspot thing, Mango Sauce had their own domain. This is about Google being a bunch of pansies, more concerned about some advertiser might get upset that there are actually web sites that comment on the fact that people do go to Thailand to get laid. As the author David points out:
Google censors nearly everything you read because webmasters fear losing their irreplaceable Google AdSense revenue.
Now, you can no longer openly discuss sex, politics and religion – or any other topic
that Google’s secret army of censors disapproves of.
Google’s abuse of their near-monopoly represents the biggest threat to free-speech in a
generation. Post a link to this page now –
Read the whole story here.
He’s quite honest about his creation:
Mango Sauce is a blog about expat life in Thailand. Like most expats here, I’ve got a Thai girlfriend and the resulting cultural confusion gives me endless material to write about.
When you discuss relationships between men and women you have to mention sex sometimes – just as football commentators are expected to mention the goals. I know precisely where to draw the line but Google doesn’t seem to care. Despite being the planet’s largest peddler of hardcore filth, they draw everyone else’s line at flower-arranging (so long as the birds and bees are kept at a safe distance).
It’s lucky that our filmmakers, TV producers and newspaper editors aren’t subjected to such harsh censorship because we’d all die of boredom.
Ain’t that the the truth………..
It goes without saying that some of the stories posted on Mango Sauce are a bit
risque. However, there’s nothing here that couldn’t be republished in mainstream
magazines like FHM and Maxim.The site is completely work-safe. There’s no nudity, no porno stories, no excessive profanity, no racism and no homophobia. Whether you’re black, white, straight or gay, there’s nothing in Mango Sauce that will offend you – or make the day of that poisonous little creep in the computer department who’s right now snooping through your browser cache, hoping to get you fired.
If anything on the site makes you feel compelled to scurry off to the company washroom for a spot of executive relief, then you’re got exceedingly strange tastes and should seek professional help at once.
Mango Sauce is written to make people laugh – not to get them off.
Especially since Google has plenty of porn linked to its name. Just try doing an image search with the filters off.
Now it has been pointed out by some commenters that there are other alternatives for ad revenue and I do find the Adsense ads somewhat tiring. But who knows, in a couple of years I might need the income:
I’m a fellow Thailand blogger who’s currently much more popular than you and the adult/mature content in my Readers’ Submissions Section makes Mango Sauce look like a bake-sale at the Mother’s Union. The modest revenue from Google AdSense is the last thing that stands between me and a cliched balcony death-plunge from the 88th floor of the Baiyoke Sky Hotel so it goes without saying that I’m shitting myself as I wait for the
heavy knock of Google’s murderous storm-troopers on the door of the fan-only windowless room in a crumbling shophouse off Petchaburi Road that I jokingly refer to as an apartment.
Fight the power! E-mail Google today!
