Google joins Twitter in limiting political ads

21 Nov 2019

On Wednesday, Google announced that political advertisers will no longer be allowed to put up political adverts, which will continue to push Facebook to limit micro-targeting. 

Google Ads executive Scott Spencer explained, “Whether you’re running for office or selling office furniture, we apply the same ads policies to everyone; there are no carve-outs.” Other than political ads, Google will not allow “deepfakes,” video and images which are “demonstrably false claims” that may play an important role in elections and influence democracy.  

He added on, ““No one can sensibly adjudicate every political claim, counterclaim, and insinuation, so we expect that the number of political ads on which we take action will be very limited – but we will continue to do so for clear violations.”

In an email, the Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker’s deputy campaign manager said that targeted ads may no longer concern candidates, political parties or ballot measures. Google’s features were used to target individual users cannot be used anymore, but may be targeted by age, gender and location to the level of postal code.

Twitter has also restricted political advertising ahead of the UK’s general election on 12 December and the 2020 U.S. presidential election. 

Facebook stated, “For over a year, we’ve provided unprecedented transparency into all US federal & state campaigns & we prohibit voter suppression in all ads. As we’ve said, we are looking at different ways we might refine our approach to political ads.”

“Regardless of the cost or impact to spending on our platforms, we believe these changes will help promote confidence in digital political advertising and trust in electoral processes worldwide,” Spencer said. 

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