Google has declared my site unfit for advertising. I imagine it's due to a low level of traffic. I'm far from an influencer, and if I had to guess, my WordPress blog probably gets more views than anything I've written here in the past year.
And that's fine.
The upshot to all of this is it means there are no ads on my site, which is how it should be. Contrast this with YouTube, where a channel can be demonetized, but still have ads all over it. The channel in question simply does not get the money. Maybe that's how it should be, though. After all, what advertisers were most afraid of when it came to YouTube was their money going to content creators who they disagreed with or otherwise didn't want to be associated with. The platform still got the support it needed, and users were free to share what they wanted to (within reason).
Of course, I'm sure Blogger takes a lot fewer resource to maintain than a data hog like YouTube, so Google didn't have much of a choice when it came to their "advertiser friendly" policies. It's what makes Elon Musk's recent middle finger to advertisers so frustrating. He's both right and wrong for more or less the same reason. Businesses have a right to decide who they will and won't do business with, just as consumers have a choice with where they spend their money. That's called the free market. However, just like George Carlin said about the American Dream, you have to be asleep to believe it. Right now, big businesses hold more power than they deserve and the average consumer is in no position to do anything to their bottom line and therefore effect change in an unfair market.
When consumers boycott, it takes a town, so to speak. When businesses boycott, it's usually a handful of guys in suits sitting around a table, never mind the hundreds or thousands of employees who may feel otherwise. This is the fundamental flaw with voting with your wallet, something I used to advocate for quite vehemently. When people vote, it's one vote per person. When dollars vote... well, they can't actually vote. The people holding the dollars do. As Douglas Adams said, "On the whole, it was not the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."
As for Blogger, I intend to stay; monetization wasn't the goal... not really, anyway. I've been comparing WordPress with Blogger for a few weeks now as the former keeps sending discount codes my way. Blogger technically offers a lot while asking for "nothing" (besides your data) in return. The only real paid feature on Blogger is registering a domain name. WordPress, meanwhile, offers a more streamlined user experience, but only if you play their paywall game. Automattic is not Alphabet; they can't afford to give WordPress away for free. They want money, not data.
As of now, WordPress is my after show for Blogger. Anything I don't feel like posting here usually ends up over there. At most, WordPress is my back up if Google decides they don't like keeping Blogger around. It wouldn't be the first time I've had to migrate from a blogging service, and if the Muskrat's acquisition of Twitter has affirmed anything for me, it's that no platform is permanent.
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