



TODAY I LEARNED something while entering keywords that I thought would be relevant to Hammer of Truth’s ongoing Join or Die campaign that’s running some AdWords campaigns. I thought maybe the keyword “revolution” might be useful to finding fellow disgruntled Americans who would be curious as to what we were all about based on a short, provocative ad message.

Anyways, the keyword “revolution” is clearly verboten at Google for one reason or another. Funny enough, this also seems to screw up anyone trying to use “dance dance revolution” as a keyword (much to the chagrin of any upstart video-game dance troupes).

Now I’m not sure why Google would go through the trouble of soft banning this specific keyword. Actually, I can see why they would go through the trouble, but I’ll say I think it’s wrong anyways. I know Google has been recently doing a lot of contortions to fit themselves into the “real world” where kissing a little government and telecom carrier ass has benefits. But I’m rather disappointed in what this means to the potential chilling effect on free speech against either of these institutions.

UPDATE: I can’t help but feel that this is similar in scope to Facebook banning “marijuana leaf images” in the middle of an election in California in which marijuana is the issue.