By Joshua Tyler
| Published
GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT is reactivating. In November, Google shut down this website, but in the past month, things have begun powering back up. You won’t want to miss it.
I plan to continue practicing total transparency as we go through this process. Here’s what happened, what I’ve done about it, and what I’m doing differently.Â
The Rise And Fall And Rise And Fall And Rise Of GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT
GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT began testing the waters for a return in December. After months of being shadowbanned by Google (more on what happened here), there were signs the shadowban had been lifted.
Over the past two years, we’ve been shadowbanned and unshadowbanned four times, despite Google telling me directly that there’s nothing wrong with this site. The longest and most recent shadowban lasted nearly four months. At that time, Google told us point blank that we would not recover any time soon. As a result, I was forced to lay off our entire staff and stop publishing.
Although Google directly told us nothing would be fixed, it now seems like it has. It’s like we’re a mouse, and Google is an unusually mischievous cat. Speaking from the mouse’s perspective, it’s not fun being toyed with. It ruins people’s lives. That cat, of course, does not care.
The internet controlling web giant has decided people are allowed to read our content again. Not as much as they used to be, we’re still throttled, but at least it’s possible to see some of what we do.
So, Giant Freakin Robot will resume publishing on a limited basis. We won’t be able to bring 90% of our employees back, but we will be able to produce new and interesting content more consistently. Until Google stops us again, that is.
A Different Approach For GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT’s Return
News is dead. We won’t do it anymore.
The future of news is on social media platforms like X, where the facts of whatever happens can be stated in a sentence or two. Websites no longer have a place in reporting. Also, as any entertainment writer will tell you, news is what they hate writing the most.
You don’t want it, we don’t want it, and so we aren’t doing it.
Instead, we will focus on more complex commentary, recommendations, discussion, and opinions. If it doesn’t require more than a sentence or two to convey, we won’t write about it. No one should. That’s why platforms like X exist.
Most of what GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT publishes will be based on what our writers pitch themselves. That means on this site, you’ll only read content on the topics that we are the most expert in and most passionate about. Writers will pitch their own stories, and we’ll let them write whatever they want because we know they want the same things our readers want. Everyone wins.
Most of all, we will continue to focus on YouTube. It’s a superior platform and the best place to set up shop if you want to survive the web’s shift towards becoming a corporate-owned Zero Click Internet. The ZCI is inevitable; that fight is over.
Independent Publishing on a large scale is also now over. Independent Publishers are no longer allowed to compete with big media companies. That’s fine with us because their business model based on keyword manipulation is already dead.