Big Google Is Watching

You know they're watching.   I mean, they know you're reading this right now.

I came to realize just how much our patterns of behavior are being viewing every single second of the day.    And it came to me so innocently and suddenly.

You may have noticed that I started an experiment recently on this blog.   I have chosen to have small, discrete ads placed at the bottom of the daily post.   I thought this would be a great way to monetize what I do here.   At the end of last week, I had made 43 cents in a month.   Time to put up that down payment for the beachfront condo on Kauai.

While the ads are getting very little notice, the alleged parent company of us all...Google...did.   Apparently, the mother ship decided to do a pass through ten years of my content here.   And I recently this e-mail over the Gmail server.

Hello,

This is a warning message to alert you that there is action required to bring your AdSense account into compliance with our AdSense program policies. We’ve provided additional details below, along with the actions to be taken on your part.

Affected website: lenspeaks.blogspot.com

Example page where violation occurred: http://lenspeaks.blogspot.in/2014/01/the-first-bad-images-of-2014.html

Action required: Please make changes immediately to your site to follow AdSense program policies.

Current account status: Active

Violation explanation

​

As stated in our program policies, we may not show Google ads on pages with content that is sexually suggestive or intended to sexually arouse. This includes, but is not limited to:

• pornographic images, videos, or games
• sexually gratifying text, images, audio, or video

How to resolve:

• If you received a notification in regard to page content, we request that you immediately remove Google ads from the violating pages. If you are unable to, or unsure of how to remove the ads from these pages, or would like to continue monetizing the page with Google ads, please modify or remove the violating content to meet our AdSense policies.
• If you received a notification in regards to the way ads are implemented on your site, please make the necessary changes to your implementation.

You do not need to contact us if you make changes. Please be aware that if additional violations are accrued, ad serving may be disabled to the website listed above. You should immediately take time to review your pages with Google ads to ensure that they comply with our policies.

Additionally, please be aware that the URL above is just an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website or other sites that you own. To reduce the likelihood of future warnings from us, we suggest that you review all your sites for compliance. Here are some useful resources you might be interested in.

• AdSense policy FAQs
• Using site: search to find violations
• Recommended solutions for policing your content
• Content filtering

For more information regarding our policy warning notifications, visit our Help Center.

We thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

So I went back and looked at the offending piece.   It was one of those pictorials I derive for Awkward Family Portraits.  There was one photo that had a barebacked woman lying across a shirtless guy.   I removed it.   Then I looked at some of the other pictures and began to censor them.   

Yeah, they got me.   And so it begins.   I wanted to be whisker-clean.   All for the sake of 43 cents.

Welcome to the new American normal.  See!  Now I can't get rid of this ugly white background.

Dinner last night:  Grilled bratwurst at the Dodger game.