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Google to restrict political adverts worldwide

312 points by ggambetta 7y ago

buboard 7y ago
> The firm said it would also clarify under what circumstances it would remove political ads for making "false claims". Oh great, this means they will apply the same rules to regular ads, right?
- me_me_me 7y ago
  >> The firm said it would also clarify under what circumstances it would remove political ads for making "false claims". >Oh great, this means they will apply the same rules to regular ads, right? So ban all ads altogether :)
- skybrian 7y ago
  They are claiming the rules will be somehow similar: > Whether you’re running for office or selling office furniture, we apply the same ads policies to everyone; there are no carve-outs. It’s against our policies for any advertiser to make a false claim—whether it's a claim about the price of a chair or a claim that you can vote by text message, that election day is postponed, or that a candidate has died. To make this more explicit, we’re clarifying our ads policies and adding examples to show how our policies prohibit things like “deep fakes” (doctored and manipulated media), misleading claims about the census process, and ads or destinations making demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process. https://blog.google/technology/ads/update-our-political-ads-policy https://blog.google/technology/ads/update-our-political-ads-...
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  This is already part of their stated policy.
- dillondoyle 7y ago
  This should be up to the FTC to enforce existing laws (in non-political advertising). Not a for-profit company. If the laws aren't adequate or enforcement isn't adequate I believe it's up to our Government to fix.
dogma1138 7y ago
Just ban them completely or don't bother, I don't want Google to be the judge of the validity of claims as it's perfectly possible to make an add which is 100% made up of technically correct statements but presents a misleading narrative. Then it comes to the question is there is such thing as a true narrative to begin with as narratives are subjective in nature, this is a can of worms that Google shouldn't open. So yeah a full ban sure but not this, if they want some sort of a partial ban they should probably have an interface that allows local electoral commissions to vet advertisement and the most important thing I think Google must do is to disable targeted political ads if they continue to allow them in any shape or form.
- acollins1331 7y ago
  But full ban costs Google money.
  - ovi256 7y ago
    Even this restriction costs them money, as the advertisers have either worse targeting, so lower ROI, so they'll spend less, or they'll have to do the targeting work themselves, which removes part of the value chain from Google, so they'll pay less.
  - mc32 7y ago
    I’m not sure if that: if ads are less effective (generalized, less targeted) advertisers (campaigns) will have to spend more money to have the same impact.
- justin66 7y ago
  > I don't want Google to be the judge of the validity of claims as it's perfectly possible to make an add which is 100% made up of technically correct statements but presents a misleading narrative. What do you find objectionable about a low-pass filter that simply removes obvious lies?
  - zajd 7y ago
    > simply removes obvious lies Good luck!
OzzyB 7y ago
Let's be clear, this isn't an outright ban but just a restriction. > It said political groups would soon only be able to target ads based on "general categories" such as age, gender and rough location. This just means that the moneyed few with deep pockets and illicit agendas will simply have to spend more to get their message out since they won't have the benefit of niche targeting.
- mc32 7y ago
  Oooo! So they make even more money since the advertisers can’t target the ads and have to use more but less effective ads!!! That’s a nice side effect for business while pretending you’re being noble. Ah, the joy of signaling.
  - bagacrap 7y ago
    ...or the relative value of Google's ads is decreased and advertisers take their money elsewhere
    - wutbrodo 7y ago
      Seriously... My "favorite" part of posts about Google on HN is the posts that combine blind ignorance about the ads business, blind hatred of Google and pat-yourself-on-the-back cynicism. It gets _so_ tiresome.
      - ShteiLoups 7y ago
        I love the meta debate about HN. I frequently click out of a thread after reading the first half of the first comment, it's always the same thing over and over. HN is a great as an aggregator of interesting article, but the discussion is frequently lacking substance.
        wutbrodo 7y ago
        I'd slightly disagree; the reason I complain about it so much is because there are so many people here who are clearly intelligent and thoughtful and have interesting perspectives. I go back and forth on whether picking gems out of the piles of manure is worth it. In part, I've been badly spoiled by another forum I participate in that heavily moderates tone (and tries to separate it from content). I wouldn't have guessed it, but it turns out that low-effort intellectual dishonesty and rank stupidity of the sort that annoy me here correlate pretty well with emotional incontinence, which means that the occasional low-quality commenter that pops up on that forum gets washed out pretty quickly.
raxxorrax 7y ago
I do believe this will strengthen propaganda to be honest. I don't think I ever noticed a political ad from Google (not US based), but I am pretty certain that Google will ban those advertisements that are not in their interest. Google has close contaxts to many political circles.
- Pimpus 7y ago
  I posted this link on HN before and was downvoted. Here it is again. https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/
  - domnomnom 7y ago
    I really don’t like Hillary and I refuse to use google. I do enjoy reading DARPA funded research on occasion. Smear starts here: “ Nobody wants to acknowledge that Google has grown big and bad. But it has. Schmidt’s tenure as CEO saw Google integrate with the shadiest of US power structures as it expanded into a geographically invasive megacorporation.” This is actually a systemic problem and seems more like a passive criticism of the US overall. The interesting tactic here is the Hillary+Obama+LiberalGoogle to get those divisive flames going. Then it paints DARPA research as bad by trying to connect it directly to intelligence. WHAT defending your country is bad now?! Look at what you’re implicitly agreeing to if you accept this. Say NSA is bad or oversteps bounds or hacks to much or whatever those are separate arguments. DARPA research is good stuff and supporting defense technology is too.
new_here 7y ago
Why not just ban the mentioning of a competing party in paid adverts? This works pretty well for above the line advertising restrictions in some contries where brands cannot mention competitors in their ads. It encourages advertisers to focus on promoting their own merits instead of misinformation about competitors.
- ptaipale 7y ago
  But it doesn't stop "concerned citizens" or "non-governmental organisations" from spreading misinformation about others.
  - new_here 7y ago
    Just limit it so that only verified parties can mention their own brands.
    - lmm 7y ago
      That does nothing to stop a "swift boat" style smear campaign that simply doesn't mention anything about the alternative.
- shakna 7y ago
  Because you don't need to mention a party directly to run a smear campaign. Most politicians end up with nicknames over scandals. For example: Ad depicting a pig in mud. "Do we want this in government?" Mentions no one directly. But if it were run at the time David Cameron was running in the UK, it would be blatantly obvious who it was referring to, to the people on the ground. Not so much to the people/machines making approvals of these ads from other nations.
StuffedParrot 7y ago
Or, we could ban ads altogether and really improve society.
- miguelmota 7y ago
  So you're willing to pay a subscription fee to use Google Search, Google Docs, Google Maps, Youtube, etc?
  - StuffedParrot 7y ago
    Sure, but not everyone can. Realistically Search and Maps should be public utilities. And quite honestly, Google is completely scamming anyone who pays for my views. They know damn well I don’t see ads, let alone click on them (except through automated means a la ad nauseam).
    - miguelmota 7y ago
      > Realistically Search and Maps should be public utilities. That's the most comical thing I've read today. The government controlling search and maps is the last thing anyone should ever want. Not to mention they'll innovate as quickly as they innovate the DMV; no incentive therefore no innovation. Public utilities such as water, gas, and electricity are natural monopolies and priced on a per usage basis, so you'll be paying per search query and map lookup making it a more expensive and worse experience.
      - StuffedParrot 7y ago
        > The government controlling search and maps is the last thing anyone should ever want. Why is this any worse than Google? There are obvious perverse incentives against providing a decent search tool on every page by design.
        miguelmota 7y ago
        > Why is this any worse than Google? - Easier surveillance of citizens - Easier to censor anti-government speech - Easier to alter search results for more government propaganda - Easier to make correlations between search history and crimes for when it's convenient to prosecutors - Lower quality of service because the government does not have consumer's best-interest in mind I don't know about you but I prefer to not live in George Orwell's 1984 dystopian world
Merrill 7y ago
They should ban ads for prescription drugs that cannot show through double-blind testing that they are more effective than cheaper branded or generic drugs.
rtkwe 7y ago
Also give us access to all the ads being run. Part of the insidious nature of microtargeting ads is they get seen by few people outside the community so you have no idea what's being said to respond, rebut or correct.
- dominik 7y ago
  https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/home https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/home
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    Neat didn't know that existed.
  - inetknght 7y ago
    Is that "all ads" or just the ads that get marked as political?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - cartoonworld 7y ago
    Thanks for posting this, I was also unaware. Slightly off-topic, but Facebook offers a similar thing: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/ https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/ I like these additions to ad serving entities, this is an important development. I'm really surprised I was not informed about these ad transparency portals, and that nobody seems to be paying attention to these. I would have wagered there would be various activists using this tool already. None of my news channels have this on their radar. Does anybody know of other ad transparency portals, or of any projects working with these portals? Whats the likelyhood that these portals vanish into nothing, or behind a paywall or whatever? Are there APIs?
    - deleted 7y ago
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ycombonator 7y ago
All the handwringing because the orange man won the election. The political ads were fine decades leading upto 2016. Before you down vote me prove my assertion is incorrect.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Well, yes. Political advertising wasn't nearly as extensive on the Internet in 2012, and the existing US TV media ads weren't exactly honest to start with. But the election of someone with a very high number of associates who have subsequently been convicted of corruption and is himself under impeachment shows that something has gone wrong. The situation is even worse in countries like the UK which had somewhat-regulated advertising, suddenly being exposed to the Wild West. Reports were going around this morning of the Conservative party buying a misleading ad pointing at their own "labourmanifesto.co.uk". Basically as legitimate as a banking phish site.
  - ReptileMan 7y ago
    >But the election of someone with a very high number of associates who have subsequently been convicted of corruption and is himself under impeachment shows that something has gone wrong. Are we talking about Clinton, Reagan or Nixon? Since all of those had pretty dirty dealing in the administrations. Are you certain that people that voted for Trump expected a saint and didn't know what kind of guy he was? If voters got what they wanted then there has been nothing gone wrong.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      Those were also bad. If voters want someone who behaves like the law doesn't apply to them then there is definitely something much bigger wrong. But sometimes it seems they do.
- diffeomorphism 7y ago
  I hereby assert that you are wrong. Prove me incorrect.
- 7y ago
skizm 7y ago
I wish ad and social media companies would just tag ads (and ideally more popular articles) similar to how reddit mods can tag submissions. "Misleading", "Information cannot be verified", "Factually incorrect", "Paid for by XYZ", "Satire" etc. I would say they can probably do this with machine learning or some sort of crowdsourced system, but I feel like that is wide open to well poisoning attacks. Might be easiest and most accurate to send ads that get enough reports to a human to do tagging (or not if they don't think it is appropriate). Have several employees do tagging and if enough give the same tag, apply it. Warn all advertisers their articles can be tagged if they don't make an honest effort to accurately represent whatever it is they're advertising. It isn't perfect system, but I think it could work.
- jlebar 7y ago
  Imagine the outcry if Google were to label an ad for Fox/Breitbart/Daily Caller/Trump as "misleading" or "factually incorrect". (Indeed I might get called out even here on HN for my "bias" given that I highlighted right-wing publications and politicians.) That is a dragon you don't want to tickle.
  - tcd 7y ago
    No media outlet is immune to posting what may be considered factually incorrect information, for example, earlier this year as highlighted in [1]. Deciding what is "true" or not these days is incredibly difficult if not impossible when we have a POTUS who wants to control the narrative and calls what could be considered factually correct as "fake news". Even reporting the "facts" has become incredibly difficult, especially when digital data is so easily manipulated (for example, how can we verify the integrity of a 'tweet' as it was published at a particular second in history? Is there a hash that should be provided? Screenshots can be easily manipulated, as some articles embed the tweet itself and can be later modified, even Spez on Reddit admitted to editing the database). [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46935701 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46935701
    - Fellshard 7y ago
dominik 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589711
deleted 7y ago
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benrmatthews 7y ago
The Conservative Party are currently flouting this “restriction” in the UK general elections: https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/1197469344210604037 https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/119746934421060403...
inetknght 7y ago
Exactly how would Google determine whether an advertisement is political in nature?
- tropo 7y ago
  I can see this hitting legal businesses, like gun stores and abortion providers. Advertisements for those are equally political, but I really doubt that Google would judge it that way.
journalctl 7y ago
Cool. When will they stop aggregating all of everyone’s data ever?
vergessenmir 7y ago
Restricting the categories for political advertising is certainly a move in the right direction. It will reduce the power of digital advertising to that of traditional media. It may not be a welcome move by some political parties but overall it could allow for good ideas from rival parties to have a wider reach rather than 'preaching to the choir' as it were. The dissemination of good ideas might become more democratic. However, the idea of removing ads because of 'false claims' can only lead to censorship in the future. The list of what's considered false will inevitably grow over time and put a lot of power in the hands of whoever is deciding the 'truthiness' of claims. It isn't difficult to imagine this being applied inconsistently in countries further away from Western politcal norms. This does give Google a lot of power in shaping political discourse and influence outside of US and EU territories. We know from how they've handled disputes on YouTube, disabled Gmail and developer accounts that this process unlikely have any better transparency than we've seen to date. I'd argue that political advertising would require greater transparency and I'm not convinced that Google has the capability or the motivation to provide it.
- gwbas1c 7y ago
  > However, the idea of removing ads because of 'false claims' can only lead to censorship in the future Looks like what they're calling 'false claims' is extremely narrow and based on simple objective facts: > For example, Google would remove ads that falsely claimed that a candidate had died or that gave the wrong date for an election. > However, it would not ban claims that you cannot trust a rival party, for instance, which would be viewed as being a matter of opinion. IMO, I think the better approach to handle truthiness issues is to give the other party/candidate/candidates a chance to post a rebuttal.
  - munificent 7y ago
    > I think the better approach to handle truthiness issues is to give the other party/candidate/candidates a chance to post a rebuttal. I disagree. That's effectively how modern journalism works where the news is "objective" by letting each side say its piece. The end result is that the media is easy exploitable. The fundamental problem is that manufacturing lies takes less effort than explaining the truth. The latter is hampered by requiring research, evidence, and consistency. The former has no such restrictions. That means Party A can spend five minutes saying "Party B eats kittens!" Now Party A has to spend a week providing evidence that no, they do not in fact eat kittens. Meanwhile, Party A has already put out five more press releases about how Party B drinks the blood of infants, was responsible for Firefly being canceled, and wants to raise your taxes to buy bombs to drop on wildlife preserves. The consequence is that whoever has the least respect for the truth has the greatest ability to control the narrative. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
throwGuardian 7y ago
Google will be totally neutral fellas despite: 1. Some 95% of employees being registered Democrats 2. 100% of senior leadership being Democrat. Heck, they even wept publicly after the 2016 elections. 3. They've never refuted contents of leaked tapes exposing bias - just keep denying that the said bias is company policy. [1][2][3][4] [1]: https://youtu.be/CX6LlEcJ4nw https://youtu.be/CX6LlEcJ4nw [2]: https://youtu.be/IzF7nBmwPso https://youtu.be/IzF7nBmwPso [3]: https://youtu.be/SY82j7NUtCQ https://youtu.be/SY82j7NUtCQ [4]: https://youtu.be/ik_kzn3etsE https://youtu.be/ik_kzn3etsE
- djaque 7y ago
  Who their employee's vote for isn't bias. Speaking of bias, all of your sources are skewed to the extremes of the political spectrum and I've got to imagine that they are giving a very one sided view of the problem your talking about.
  - throwGuardian 7y ago
    > Who their employee's vote for isn't bias Oh the double speak here! Do you remember the ouster of Brandon Eich from Mozilla? Or the cancel culture plaguing Chick Filet right now? Why not apply that logic to companies led by conservatives? Can you imagine the triggering on the matter if Google's employees were 95% Republican? And all my sources are unedited Congressional testimonies. Feel free to source all 4 hours of them off C-SPAN/PBS. Also note that all claims hold: that Google reportedly gets caught with seemingly biased actions, and never denies the actions in testimonies, just maintains it isn't company policy.
- ggggtez 7y ago
  95% political affiliation already off the bat is suspicious. Who measured? How did they measure? Google certainly wouldn't, as asking your employees political affiliation would be illegal. And not just affiliation, but registration? What about employees in non-US countries? They are registered with a US political party? If you're going to just make stuff up, why not say 100% at that point?
friendlybus 7y ago
We've moved on from hyper targeted ideologies and pre- and post-truth storytelling to ageism and money/time/quantity as political symbols. Ok boomer. This 'restriction' is simply Google keeping up with the times. Google wants to move from being the narrative controlling, ai job-taking strong man to the biggest fish in the sea that you have to pay to be on. In a few years it will refine the rules again.
yters 7y ago
Google should create a department of truth, so everyone has a single source of objective truth. That should help put everyone at ease and make it easier to create a department of peace and love.
tehjoker 7y ago
All these companies trying to look cool by restricting "political" adverts while retaining full power to corporate advertising which is 10000% political.
dillondoyle 7y ago
I dont understand this argument that political advertising should be broad target only. TV is often used as an example, but you can target cable to the individual/house, just like online ads. A huge percent of political speech is individually targeted (phone calls, door knocks, mail, digital, addressable tv). Campaigns and bad actors have been doing deceptive or flat out lying campaigns forever (before the internet). Google 'McCain Bush child robocall' or 'push poll' as simple examples. Edit: For reference I work in digital politics, my agency buys & creates digital advertising.
plntd 7y ago
Yesterday we had a story about google's anti-union activities and hn was saying how evil and untrustworthy they were. Now hn is praising Google for censoring and being arbiters of truth just because they think Google is going to censor "correctly" or in line with their political leaning. One day google can't be trusted. The next day google should determine the political discourse of countries.
smadurange 7y ago
Not really sure if Google is the right gatekeeper for this kind of thing. Google as a company has often take clear political stances.
rasz 7y ago
Amazing HN feedback, its like people are not aware of whats going on, Mark Zuckerberg wasnt being grilled by Congress for funsies after all. Its about stealing elections, and Google/Fb waking up to the possibility of heavy legal backlash. At least watch Computer History Museum" CHM Live | The Great Hack" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y26NQdTLtaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y26NQdTLtaw

312 points by ggambetta 7y ago

> The firm said it would also clarify under what circumstances it would remove political ads for making "false claims". Oh great, this means they will apply the same rules to regular ads, right?

me_me_me 7y ago
>> The firm said it would also clarify under what circumstances it would remove political ads for making "false claims". >Oh great, this means they will apply the same rules to regular ads, right? So ban all ads altogether :)
skybrian 7y ago
They are claiming the rules will be somehow similar: > Whether you’re running for office or selling office furniture, we apply the same ads policies to everyone; there are no carve-outs. It’s against our policies for any advertiser to make a false claim—whether it's a claim about the price of a chair or a claim that you can vote by text message, that election day is postponed, or that a candidate has died. To make this more explicit, we’re clarifying our ads policies and adding examples to show how our policies prohibit things like “deep fakes” (doctored and manipulated media), misleading claims about the census process, and ads or destinations making demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process. https://blog.google/technology/ads/update-our-political-ads-policy https://blog.google/technology/ads/update-our-political-ads-...
wutbrodo 7y ago
This is already part of their stated policy.
dillondoyle 7y ago
This should be up to the FTC to enforce existing laws (in non-political advertising). Not a for-profit company. If the laws aren't adequate or enforcement isn't adequate I believe it's up to our Government to fix.

dogma1138 7y ago

Just ban them completely or don't bother, I don't want Google to be the judge of the validity of claims as it's perfectly possible to make an add which is 100% made up of technically correct statements but presents a misleading narrative. Then it comes to the question is there is such thing as a true narrative to begin with as narratives are subjective in nature, this is a can of worms that Google shouldn't open. So yeah a full ban sure but not this, if they want some sort of a partial ban they should probably have an interface that allows local electoral commissions to vet advertisement and the most important thing I think Google must do is to disable targeted political ads if they continue to allow them in any shape or form.

acollins1331 7y ago
But full ban costs Google money.
- ovi256 7y ago
  Even this restriction costs them money, as the advertisers have either worse targeting, so lower ROI, so they'll spend less, or they'll have to do the targeting work themselves, which removes part of the value chain from Google, so they'll pay less.
- mc32 7y ago
  I’m not sure if that: if ads are less effective (generalized, less targeted) advertisers (campaigns) will have to spend more money to have the same impact.
justin66 7y ago
> I don't want Google to be the judge of the validity of claims as it's perfectly possible to make an add which is 100% made up of technically correct statements but presents a misleading narrative. What do you find objectionable about a low-pass filter that simply removes obvious lies?
- zajd 7y ago
  > simply removes obvious lies Good luck!

OzzyB 7y ago

Let's be clear, this isn't an outright ban but just a restriction. > It said political groups would soon only be able to target ads based on "general categories" such as age, gender and rough location. This just means that the moneyed few with deep pockets and illicit agendas will simply have to spend more to get their message out since they won't have the benefit of niche targeting.

mc32 7y ago
Oooo! So they make even more money since the advertisers can’t target the ads and have to use more but less effective ads!!! That’s a nice side effect for business while pretending you’re being noble. Ah, the joy of signaling.
- bagacrap 7y ago
  ...or the relative value of Google's ads is decreased and advertisers take their money elsewhere
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    Seriously... My "favorite" part of posts about Google on HN is the posts that combine blind ignorance about the ads business, blind hatred of Google and pat-yourself-on-the-back cynicism. It gets _so_ tiresome.
    - ShteiLoups 7y ago
      I love the meta debate about HN. I frequently click out of a thread after reading the first half of the first comment, it's always the same thing over and over. HN is a great as an aggregator of interesting article, but the discussion is frequently lacking substance.
      - wutbrodo 7y ago
        I'd slightly disagree; the reason I complain about it so much is because there are so many people here who are clearly intelligent and thoughtful and have interesting perspectives. I go back and forth on whether picking gems out of the piles of manure is worth it. In part, I've been badly spoiled by another forum I participate in that heavily moderates tone (and tries to separate it from content). I wouldn't have guessed it, but it turns out that low-effort intellectual dishonesty and rank stupidity of the sort that annoy me here correlate pretty well with emotional incontinence, which means that the occasional low-quality commenter that pops up on that forum gets washed out pretty quickly.

raxxorrax 7y ago

I do believe this will strengthen propaganda to be honest. I don't think I ever noticed a political ad from Google (not US based), but I am pretty certain that Google will ban those advertisements that are not in their interest. Google has close contaxts to many political circles.

Pimpus 7y ago
I posted this link on HN before and was downvoted. Here it is again. https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/
- domnomnom 7y ago
  I really don’t like Hillary and I refuse to use google. I do enjoy reading DARPA funded research on occasion. Smear starts here: “ Nobody wants to acknowledge that Google has grown big and bad. But it has. Schmidt’s tenure as CEO saw Google integrate with the shadiest of US power structures as it expanded into a geographically invasive megacorporation.” This is actually a systemic problem and seems more like a passive criticism of the US overall. The interesting tactic here is the Hillary+Obama+LiberalGoogle to get those divisive flames going. Then it paints DARPA research as bad by trying to connect it directly to intelligence. WHAT defending your country is bad now?! Look at what you’re implicitly agreeing to if you accept this. Say NSA is bad or oversteps bounds or hacks to much or whatever those are separate arguments. DARPA research is good stuff and supporting defense technology is too.

new_here 7y ago

Why not just ban the mentioning of a competing party in paid adverts? This works pretty well for above the line advertising restrictions in some contries where brands cannot mention competitors in their ads. It encourages advertisers to focus on promoting their own merits instead of misinformation about competitors.

ptaipale 7y ago
But it doesn't stop "concerned citizens" or "non-governmental organisations" from spreading misinformation about others.
- new_here 7y ago
  Just limit it so that only verified parties can mention their own brands.
  - lmm 7y ago
    That does nothing to stop a "swift boat" style smear campaign that simply doesn't mention anything about the alternative.
shakna 7y ago
Because you don't need to mention a party directly to run a smear campaign. Most politicians end up with nicknames over scandals. For example: Ad depicting a pig in mud. "Do we want this in government?" Mentions no one directly. But if it were run at the time David Cameron was running in the UK, it would be blatantly obvious who it was referring to, to the people on the ground. Not so much to the people/machines making approvals of these ads from other nations.

StuffedParrot 7y ago

Or, we could ban ads altogether and really improve society.

miguelmota 7y ago
So you're willing to pay a subscription fee to use Google Search, Google Docs, Google Maps, Youtube, etc?
- StuffedParrot 7y ago
  Sure, but not everyone can. Realistically Search and Maps should be public utilities. And quite honestly, Google is completely scamming anyone who pays for my views. They know damn well I don’t see ads, let alone click on them (except through automated means a la ad nauseam).
  - miguelmota 7y ago
    > Realistically Search and Maps should be public utilities. That's the most comical thing I've read today. The government controlling search and maps is the last thing anyone should ever want. Not to mention they'll innovate as quickly as they innovate the DMV; no incentive therefore no innovation. Public utilities such as water, gas, and electricity are natural monopolies and priced on a per usage basis, so you'll be paying per search query and map lookup making it a more expensive and worse experience.
    - StuffedParrot 7y ago
      > The government controlling search and maps is the last thing anyone should ever want. Why is this any worse than Google? There are obvious perverse incentives against providing a decent search tool on every page by design.
      - miguelmota 7y ago
        > Why is this any worse than Google? - Easier surveillance of citizens - Easier to censor anti-government speech - Easier to alter search results for more government propaganda - Easier to make correlations between search history and crimes for when it's convenient to prosecutors - Lower quality of service because the government does not have consumer's best-interest in mind I don't know about you but I prefer to not live in George Orwell's 1984 dystopian world

Merrill 7y ago

They should ban ads for prescription drugs that cannot show through double-blind testing that they are more effective than cheaper branded or generic drugs.

rtkwe 7y ago

Also give us access to all the ads being run. Part of the insidious nature of microtargeting ads is they get seen by few people outside the community so you have no idea what's being said to respond, rebut or correct.

dominik 7y ago
https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/home https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/home
- rtkwe 7y ago
  Neat didn't know that existed.
- inetknght 7y ago
  Is that "all ads" or just the ads that get marked as political?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- cartoonworld 7y ago
  Thanks for posting this, I was also unaware. Slightly off-topic, but Facebook offers a similar thing: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/ https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/ I like these additions to ad serving entities, this is an important development. I'm really surprised I was not informed about these ad transparency portals, and that nobody seems to be paying attention to these. I would have wagered there would be various activists using this tool already. None of my news channels have this on their radar. Does anybody know of other ad transparency portals, or of any projects working with these portals? Whats the likelyhood that these portals vanish into nothing, or behind a paywall or whatever? Are there APIs?
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ycombonator 7y ago

All the handwringing because the orange man won the election. The political ads were fine decades leading upto 2016. Before you down vote me prove my assertion is incorrect.

pjc50 7y ago
Well, yes. Political advertising wasn't nearly as extensive on the Internet in 2012, and the existing US TV media ads weren't exactly honest to start with. But the election of someone with a very high number of associates who have subsequently been convicted of corruption and is himself under impeachment shows that something has gone wrong. The situation is even worse in countries like the UK which had somewhat-regulated advertising, suddenly being exposed to the Wild West. Reports were going around this morning of the Conservative party buying a misleading ad pointing at their own "labourmanifesto.co.uk". Basically as legitimate as a banking phish site.
- ReptileMan 7y ago
  >But the election of someone with a very high number of associates who have subsequently been convicted of corruption and is himself under impeachment shows that something has gone wrong. Are we talking about Clinton, Reagan or Nixon? Since all of those had pretty dirty dealing in the administrations. Are you certain that people that voted for Trump expected a saint and didn't know what kind of guy he was? If voters got what they wanted then there has been nothing gone wrong.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Those were also bad. If voters want someone who behaves like the law doesn't apply to them then there is definitely something much bigger wrong. But sometimes it seems they do.
diffeomorphism 7y ago
I hereby assert that you are wrong. Prove me incorrect.
7y ago

skizm 7y ago

I wish ad and social media companies would just tag ads (and ideally more popular articles) similar to how reddit mods can tag submissions. "Misleading", "Information cannot be verified", "Factually incorrect", "Paid for by XYZ", "Satire" etc. I would say they can probably do this with machine learning or some sort of crowdsourced system, but I feel like that is wide open to well poisoning attacks. Might be easiest and most accurate to send ads that get enough reports to a human to do tagging (or not if they don't think it is appropriate). Have several employees do tagging and if enough give the same tag, apply it. Warn all advertisers their articles can be tagged if they don't make an honest effort to accurately represent whatever it is they're advertising. It isn't perfect system, but I think it could work.

jlebar 7y ago
Imagine the outcry if Google were to label an ad for Fox/Breitbart/Daily Caller/Trump as "misleading" or "factually incorrect". (Indeed I might get called out even here on HN for my "bias" given that I highlighted right-wing publications and politicians.) That is a dragon you don't want to tickle.
- tcd 7y ago
  No media outlet is immune to posting what may be considered factually incorrect information, for example, earlier this year as highlighted in [1]. Deciding what is "true" or not these days is incredibly difficult if not impossible when we have a POTUS who wants to control the narrative and calls what could be considered factually correct as "fake news". Even reporting the "facts" has become incredibly difficult, especially when digital data is so easily manipulated (for example, how can we verify the integrity of a 'tweet' as it was published at a particular second in history? Is there a hash that should be provided? Screenshots can be easily manipulated, as some articles embed the tweet itself and can be later modified, even Spez on Reddit admitted to editing the database). [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46935701 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46935701
  - Fellshard 7y ago

dominik 7y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589711

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benrmatthews 7y ago

The Conservative Party are currently flouting this “restriction” in the UK general elections: https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/1197469344210604037 https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/119746934421060403...

inetknght 7y ago

Exactly how would Google determine whether an advertisement is political in nature?

tropo 7y ago
I can see this hitting legal businesses, like gun stores and abortion providers. Advertisements for those are equally political, but I really doubt that Google would judge it that way.

journalctl 7y ago

Cool. When will they stop aggregating all of everyone’s data ever?

vergessenmir 7y ago

Restricting the categories for political advertising is certainly a move in the right direction. It will reduce the power of digital advertising to that of traditional media. It may not be a welcome move by some political parties but overall it could allow for good ideas from rival parties to have a wider reach rather than 'preaching to the choir' as it were. The dissemination of good ideas might become more democratic. However, the idea of removing ads because of 'false claims' can only lead to censorship in the future. The list of what's considered false will inevitably grow over time and put a lot of power in the hands of whoever is deciding the 'truthiness' of claims. It isn't difficult to imagine this being applied inconsistently in countries further away from Western politcal norms. This does give Google a lot of power in shaping political discourse and influence outside of US and EU territories. We know from how they've handled disputes on YouTube, disabled Gmail and developer accounts that this process unlikely have any better transparency than we've seen to date. I'd argue that political advertising would require greater transparency and I'm not convinced that Google has the capability or the motivation to provide it.

gwbas1c 7y ago
> However, the idea of removing ads because of 'false claims' can only lead to censorship in the future Looks like what they're calling 'false claims' is extremely narrow and based on simple objective facts: > For example, Google would remove ads that falsely claimed that a candidate had died or that gave the wrong date for an election. > However, it would not ban claims that you cannot trust a rival party, for instance, which would be viewed as being a matter of opinion. IMO, I think the better approach to handle truthiness issues is to give the other party/candidate/candidates a chance to post a rebuttal.
- munificent 7y ago
  > I think the better approach to handle truthiness issues is to give the other party/candidate/candidates a chance to post a rebuttal. I disagree. That's effectively how modern journalism works where the news is "objective" by letting each side say its piece. The end result is that the media is easy exploitable. The fundamental problem is that manufacturing lies takes less effort than explaining the truth. The latter is hampered by requiring research, evidence, and consistency. The former has no such restrictions. That means Party A can spend five minutes saying "Party B eats kittens!" Now Party A has to spend a week providing evidence that no, they do not in fact eat kittens. Meanwhile, Party A has already put out five more press releases about how Party B drinks the blood of infants, was responsible for Firefly being canceled, and wants to raise your taxes to buy bombs to drop on wildlife preserves. The consequence is that whoever has the least respect for the truth has the greatest ability to control the narrative. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

throwGuardian 7y ago

Google will be totally neutral fellas despite: 1. Some 95% of employees being registered Democrats 2. 100% of senior leadership being Democrat. Heck, they even wept publicly after the 2016 elections. 3. They've never refuted contents of leaked tapes exposing bias - just keep denying that the said bias is company policy. [1][2][3][4] [1]: https://youtu.be/CX6LlEcJ4nw https://youtu.be/CX6LlEcJ4nw [2]: https://youtu.be/IzF7nBmwPso https://youtu.be/IzF7nBmwPso [3]: https://youtu.be/SY82j7NUtCQ https://youtu.be/SY82j7NUtCQ [4]: https://youtu.be/ik_kzn3etsE https://youtu.be/ik_kzn3etsE

djaque 7y ago
Who their employee's vote for isn't bias. Speaking of bias, all of your sources are skewed to the extremes of the political spectrum and I've got to imagine that they are giving a very one sided view of the problem your talking about.
- throwGuardian 7y ago
  > Who their employee's vote for isn't bias Oh the double speak here! Do you remember the ouster of Brandon Eich from Mozilla? Or the cancel culture plaguing Chick Filet right now? Why not apply that logic to companies led by conservatives? Can you imagine the triggering on the matter if Google's employees were 95% Republican? And all my sources are unedited Congressional testimonies. Feel free to source all 4 hours of them off C-SPAN/PBS. Also note that all claims hold: that Google reportedly gets caught with seemingly biased actions, and never denies the actions in testimonies, just maintains it isn't company policy.
ggggtez 7y ago
95% political affiliation already off the bat is suspicious. Who measured? How did they measure? Google certainly wouldn't, as asking your employees political affiliation would be illegal. And not just affiliation, but registration? What about employees in non-US countries? They are registered with a US political party? If you're going to just make stuff up, why not say 100% at that point?

friendlybus 7y ago

We've moved on from hyper targeted ideologies and pre- and post-truth storytelling to ageism and money/time/quantity as political symbols. Ok boomer. This 'restriction' is simply Google keeping up with the times. Google wants to move from being the narrative controlling, ai job-taking strong man to the biggest fish in the sea that you have to pay to be on. In a few years it will refine the rules again.

yters 7y ago

Google should create a department of truth, so everyone has a single source of objective truth. That should help put everyone at ease and make it easier to create a department of peace and love.

tehjoker 7y ago

All these companies trying to look cool by restricting "political" adverts while retaining full power to corporate advertising which is 10000% political.

dillondoyle 7y ago

I dont understand this argument that political advertising should be broad target only. TV is often used as an example, but you can target cable to the individual/house, just like online ads. A huge percent of political speech is individually targeted (phone calls, door knocks, mail, digital, addressable tv). Campaigns and bad actors have been doing deceptive or flat out lying campaigns forever (before the internet). Google 'McCain Bush child robocall' or 'push poll' as simple examples. Edit: For reference I work in digital politics, my agency buys & creates digital advertising.

plntd 7y ago

Yesterday we had a story about google's anti-union activities and hn was saying how evil and untrustworthy they were. Now hn is praising Google for censoring and being arbiters of truth just because they think Google is going to censor "correctly" or in line with their political leaning. One day google can't be trusted. The next day google should determine the political discourse of countries.

smadurange 7y ago

Not really sure if Google is the right gatekeeper for this kind of thing. Google as a company has often take clear political stances.

rasz 7y ago

Amazing HN feedback, its like people are not aware of whats going on, Mark Zuckerberg wasnt being grilled by Congress for funsies after all. Its about stealing elections, and Google/Fb waking up to the possibility of heavy legal backlash. At least watch Computer History Museum" CHM Live | The Great Hack" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y26NQdTLtaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y26NQdTLtaw