Skip to content Skip to footer

The Bane of Banned Books

Part of the Series

Support justice-driven, accurate and transparent news — make a quick donation to Truthout today! 

Banned books(Image: Moyers & Company)In honor of the 30th anniversary of the American Library Association’s “Banned Books Week,” Bill talks about the impact libraries have had on his youth, his dismay over book challenges in modern times, and why censorship is the biggest enemy of truth.

We lost 15 percent of our traffic overnight.

We now have three full months of data since Google changed its search to feature AI results. The numbers are worse than we anticipated. Overall readership that comes to Truthout through Google is down 54 percent against last year. The number of new readers who discover Truthout via Google searches is down 49 percent, and returning users from Google are down 51 percent.

We lost 15 percent of our readership overnight. This was a readership we painstakingly built over decades, and it vanished because Google chose corporate greed over a healthy democracy.

We anticipate a loss of roughly $500,000 in online revenue as a result of this massive traffic plunge in the next year alone.

The only way we can keep publishing is with strong reader support. We are asking you to start a monthly donation to Truthout today — anything you can do, whether $5 or $25, makes a difference.