The conspiracy touched the wallet.

Google cut the controversial site

France Soir's access

 to its advertising network, depriving the news site of part of its income due, according to the advertising giant, to repeated violations of its rules on disinformation, the American group said on Friday.

Xavier Azalbert, publication director of

France Soir

, confirmed to AFP on Friday the withdrawal, in recent days, of their “advertising service” on Google.

This measure constitutes "an attack on freedom of expression" and "undermines the viability of a press organ", he criticized.

The publication's lawyer is studying "a direct citation to the criminal court for discrimination consisting in refusing the supply of a good or a service" likely to "result in an infringement of freedom of expression", added the official. from

France Soir

.

"We warned

France Soir

before taking any measures"

Asked by AFP, Google said it had applied its regulation, which aims to protect brands "against the dissemination of their advertisements alongside dangerous and misleading content". "We warned

France Soir

before taking action, asking them to remedy persistent violations of our rules," said Google.

France Soir

denied having been warned.

This decision comes a few days after the broadcast on France 2 of an issue of the program

Complément d'Enquête

, entitled "Fake News, the money machine".

“The site seems to have been demonetized shortly before or after our investigation.

France Soir

was one of the sites on which we challenged Google, ”wrote journalist Aude Favre, co-author of the report, on Twitter.

Google also banned the American site

The Gateway Pundit at the

end of August

, while its advertising network provided it with an estimated income of 200,000 euros per month.

There are precedents

France Soir

had already been dereferenced from Google News in January 2021 and its YouTube account (owned by Google) had been suspended.

The media, which challenges these decisions, was dismissed in summary proceedings on June 2 by the Paris commercial court.

At the same time, the site accused of relaying conspiratorial theses had to comply with the re-examination of its status as a site of “political and general information” (IPG).

This approval was finally granted at the beginning of April by the joint committee for publications and press agencies (CPPAP), responsible for recognizing the quality of the online press service.

On Friday, the site was still showing some ads, especially thanks to the Outbrain automated ad network.

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