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The EU has new regulations on political ad transparency and targeting coming in this year with likely fines for non compliance. I imagine many of these old ads

The EU has new regulations on political ad transparency and targeting coming in this year with likely fines for non compliance. I imagine many of these old ads do not comply with the new rules so Google removed everything just to eliminate the risk of a fine or enforcement action. If these are important, people shouldn't rely on the ad agency archiving them.

jrochkind1 1y ago
I would think to reduce the risk of looking bad too, when people can see what was done on their ad network.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  The archive is still up for non-EU countries. They didn’t delete the entire archive. Only something specific to the EU, potentially due to some upcoming regulations there.
wtcactus 1y ago
Find me surprised the EU also has rules about this and everything else. No wonder we are getting left behind. We literally pay thousands of people out of our taxpayer money, to make life difficult for anyone that wants to do business. That’s all those bureaucrats in Brussels literally do: come up with yet more rules.
- isodev 1y ago
  You really should inform yourself what "we" are paying exactly, is it "taxpayer" money and what it gets used for. You'd be surprised at the things around you that you take for granted are also driven by those same regulations.
- notrealyme123 1y ago
  Protecting the free market is important for everyone doing business. The neo liberal dream of completely unconstrained markets leads to only monopolies and no competition.
- adamors 1y ago
  Sounds like you live in a country where elections were not manipulated by social media or at least not to the extent that they had to be annulled. Dark money and/or foreign nations with limitless money buying up digital adspace everywhere is absolutely a problem in the EU and I'm very glad we have some legislation against it now.
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  Left behind? Aren't we the happiest people in the world?
isodev 1y ago
> I imagine many of these old ads do not comply with the new rules so Google removed everything just to eliminate the risk of a fine or enforcement action. The EU does not regulate keeping historical records though. Google deleting them is almost suspicious because we can't imagine a good reason they'd go out of their way to have someone spend time on deleting information. You're right about expectations from an Ad company though. Imagine people using their browser or phones thinking "privacy".
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > The EU does not regulate keeping historical records though. My experience dealing with GDPR and other EU regulations across several companies is that the laws are very vague in their wording. We encountered a lot of scenarios where the law was just vague enough that our lawyers advised us to avoid anything that could be interpreted as infringing. The penalties assigned in some of these laws are indicated as a percentage of global profits, so we would play it safe to avoid any possibility of some EU politician trying to score political points by getting headlines about a big fine they extracted from a tech company. I don’t know about their political advertising laws specifically, but I would not be the least bit surprised if they deleted these ads to be 100% safe in dodging potential fines under vague laws. > because we can't imagine a good reason they'd go out of their way to have someone spend time on deleting information. Note that they didn’t remove the archive for non-EU countries. They only did this in the EU. By this logic, they spent extra effort exclusively doing this for the EU while keeping it for other countries. That suggests to me that some EU specific reason is in play.
  - isodev 1y ago
    I’m not sure what you’re saying exactly: you had a bad lawyer or you operate in a place where the spirit of the law is not known? > That suggests to me that some EU specific reason That was my point as well - Google is being shady for no apparent reason. I guess we’ll never know, or they’ll release some clickbaity statement like Apple’s recent “commentary” on the DMA. Baddies gonna do bad things.

jrochkind1 1y ago

I would think to reduce the risk of looking bad too, when people can see what was done on their ad network.

Aurornis 1y ago
The archive is still up for non-EU countries. They didn’t delete the entire archive. Only something specific to the EU, potentially due to some upcoming regulations there.

wtcactus 1y ago

Find me surprised the EU also has rules about this and everything else. No wonder we are getting left behind. We literally pay thousands of people out of our taxpayer money, to make life difficult for anyone that wants to do business. That’s all those bureaucrats in Brussels literally do: come up with yet more rules.

isodev 1y ago
You really should inform yourself what "we" are paying exactly, is it "taxpayer" money and what it gets used for. You'd be surprised at the things around you that you take for granted are also driven by those same regulations.
notrealyme123 1y ago
Protecting the free market is important for everyone doing business. The neo liberal dream of completely unconstrained markets leads to only monopolies and no competition.
adamors 1y ago
Sounds like you live in a country where elections were not manipulated by social media or at least not to the extent that they had to be annulled. Dark money and/or foreign nations with limitless money buying up digital adspace everywhere is absolutely a problem in the EU and I'm very glad we have some legislation against it now.
AlecSchueler 1y ago
Left behind? Aren't we the happiest people in the world?

isodev 1y ago

> I imagine many of these old ads do not comply with the new rules so Google removed everything just to eliminate the risk of a fine or enforcement action. The EU does not regulate keeping historical records though. Google deleting them is almost suspicious because we can't imagine a good reason they'd go out of their way to have someone spend time on deleting information. You're right about expectations from an Ad company though. Imagine people using their browser or phones thinking "privacy".

Aurornis 1y ago
> The EU does not regulate keeping historical records though. My experience dealing with GDPR and other EU regulations across several companies is that the laws are very vague in their wording. We encountered a lot of scenarios where the law was just vague enough that our lawyers advised us to avoid anything that could be interpreted as infringing. The penalties assigned in some of these laws are indicated as a percentage of global profits, so we would play it safe to avoid any possibility of some EU politician trying to score political points by getting headlines about a big fine they extracted from a tech company. I don’t know about their political advertising laws specifically, but I would not be the least bit surprised if they deleted these ads to be 100% safe in dodging potential fines under vague laws. > because we can't imagine a good reason they'd go out of their way to have someone spend time on deleting information. Note that they didn’t remove the archive for non-EU countries. They only did this in the EU. By this logic, they spent extra effort exclusively doing this for the EU while keeping it for other countries. That suggests to me that some EU specific reason is in play.
- isodev 1y ago
  I’m not sure what you’re saying exactly: you had a bad lawyer or you operate in a place where the spirit of the law is not known? > That suggests to me that some EU specific reason That was my point as well - Google is being shady for no apparent reason. I guess we’ll never know, or they’ll release some clickbaity statement like Apple’s recent “commentary” on the DMA. Baddies gonna do bad things.