How google punished small Indian news publisher Janta ka reporter?

Ground Report | New Delhi: In recent years, the media has reduced the quality of India's public discourse. But at the seme time, those doing honest journalism are facing difficulties. Janta Ka Reporter multimedia website said that Google has chosen to brutally punish small news publishers like Janta Ka Reporter for our decision to pursue fearless journalism.

However, in recent times, people in the country are forgetting the real function of the press: reporting the truth. After years of being the voice of social change, the media is now being controlled and manipulated by authorities who have attempted to kill off stories that hurt their reputation.

Janta Ka Reporter on Twitter wrote that Google has chosen to brutally punish a small news publisher like Janta Ka Reporter for doing bold journalism and our decision to hold the ruling party accountable.

Thread: Story of how Google has chosen to brutally punish a small news publisher like @JantaKaReporter for our decision to carry out fearless journalism and hold the ruling party to account. We've been forced to go public after suffering for more than one year @sundarpichai 1/n

— Janta Ka Reporter (@JantaKaReporter) January 10, 2022

Janta ka reporter said "After our expose on Rafale Scam in 2019, our monthly traffic began to soar exponentially as our Google ranking improved significantly. By early 2020, we were clocking more than 10 million (one crore) page views with our user base reached more than 6 million".

"The phenomenal increase in web traffic translated into an increase in revenue. This allowed us to pay off our debt and work on plans to boost our newsgathering efforts. But our world came crashing down in November 2020 when Google told us it had penalised us with ‘manual action’.

The statement further said "Google said some of our promotional posts carried web links that it considered ‘unnatural. It said, “Pages affected by manual actions can see reduced display features, lower-ranking, or even removal from Google Search results.” This has had catastrophic impact on our page views".

"Not only did it mean that our stories disappeared from the Google trending page (Google discover on mobile app), but we lost our ranking from search results as well. Alarmed by Google’s action, we identified at least 20 promotional articles that had ‘unnatural links’ and took them down" They further wrote on Twitter.

Netizens slammed Google

@sundarpichai hope you see the below thread and pass necessary instructions to those need to take action.
I was of the thinking that the corporate giant Google have developed systems to acknowledge and respond to queries/problems. Really sad to see below from @JantaKaReporter https://t.co/IwL486ifbY

— Girish Gogia (@girish_gogia) January 10, 2022

Read this entire thread.
This seems unnatural ... Would #Google give the same treatment to any other news portal from the US? My assumption is a NO! But let's look at both sides.. @JantaKaReporter can you put up screenshots of those promotional posts that were flagged? https://t.co/MRjzSIVIGr

— Deepali Prabhu (@Deepali_p) January 10, 2022

Read this Thread to know how honest journalism outspoken outlets are being cornered and forced to collapse. How @Google @Meta @Facebook & many more such giants can wipe out the very identity of anyone, for any reason and anytime. https://t.co/Fn7bC25oqI

— 🇵🇸Reekazy🇵🇸 (@Musahhey) January 10, 2022

Apart from bhakt & anti-social govt. Information technology and social media are treating true people as bad as they can. This is too low in Democratic country and where @Google should not be.
.
However, let's raise voice against dictatorship of @Google. https://t.co/7dAV6Sc189

— *The_Happiest* (@plutotrainings1) January 10, 2022

This is bizarre response from #Google A reconsideration request has to be responded , not ignored. Great work @JantaKaReporter - I am sure your efforts would not go in vain. Best https://t.co/nyP0rKfhBB

— Venkat (@OhMyGod_India) January 10, 2022

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