Brent Dusing could have gained the world.
After selling his mobile coupon company, CellFire, for $108 million, his options were limitless.
But a crisis in America nudged his soul.
As a father, Dusing was troubled by the toxic content that children encounter through gaming.
So in 2023, he started TruPlay, a Christian gaming platform for kids and teens.
As with many online companies, an essential part of Dusing’s venture required running ads through Google and TikTok.
But since TruPlay’s inception, both tech giants have continually restricted Dusing’s ads, which often contain Christian messaging, according to Dusing.
“I mean, we’re hit with violations every week or two by TikTok and Google,” Dusing told The Western Journal in a phone interview. “And it’s because our ads are deemed offensive, or religious content, or whatever. And then meanwhile, games that promote sexual content to kids, like Roblox, run ads. Diablo, which is literally a game about Satan, they can run ads without restriction.”
TikTok claims to restrict sexual content for minors, but it doesn’t — at least not as well as it could, the watchdog organization Global Witness reported in October.
As an experiment, Global Witness investigators created seven U.K. accounts in which they posed as 13-year-olds.
Despite turning on “Restricted Mode,” which TikTok said should prevent users from exposure to sexual imagery, the investigators discovered something troubling.
By simply clicking on the TikTok search bar, as any 13-year-old might, the suggestions populated keywords like “very nude babes,” “Bikini pics,” and other lewd phrases.
Dusing finds the double standard unsettling.
“It’s really about the children,” he told The Western Journal. “The children are being promoted, as I said, sexual content, violent content, demonic content, but yet they’re not being able to see — on Google platforms, on TikTok platforms — they’re not being able to see content about the Bible, about Jesus Christ, about the reality of a God who loves them. And that’s the biggest crime in all of this.”
Whenever Dusing’s content is hit with a violation, he appeals it. Usually, Google and TikTok will remove the violation.
But that’s only part of the problem.
“The way that these advertising platforms work on social media platforms is, once you get dialed down, it takes time to start back up. And then you get hit with another violation,” Dusing said.
“So it’s kind of like when you drive a car: To go to fifth gear, you’ve got to go from first, to second, to third, to fourth, to fifth. So if the car stops and stalls on the highway, it takes time to get back into fifth gear. That’s the way to think about it,” he said.
It’s a battle Dusing fights to this day.
In the meantime, he wants to expose Google and TikTok.
“When you’re blocking people from getting a worldview to teach them about hope, and truth, and the fact that God loves them — this needs to be exposed, it needs to be publicized, and it must change, and they should suffer the consequences,” Dusing said.
The Western Journal reached out to both TikTok and Google regarding Dusing’s allegations. TikTok didn’t respond, and while Google was cooperative, its response was typical.
“Ads containing religious content are allowed to run on our platforms,” a Google spokesman said in an email statement. “Our policies prohibit targeting people based on their sensitive information, including their religious affiliations, and these are applied consistently regardless of their beliefs.”
But Dusing’s case indicates Google and TikTok aren’t applying their policies consistently, and he wants these companies to make big changes.
“These are algorithmic decisions. There’s a difference between setting a policy as a company and reprogramming your algorithm, which is what must happen,” he said.
Yet Dusing’s requests and appeals have gone largely ignored, highlighting yet another double standard Christian business owners face.
“You know, if this was a matter of someone not being able to run ads based on their race, or what in America would be considered a minority religion, Google would change their policies instantly,” he told The Western Journal. “But we have appealed to Google, and we’ve appealed to executives at Google, and they’ve refused to change their policy. And that is absurd, it’s against free speech, and it’s illegal.”
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