4 ms·
This thread is full of comments that miss the fact that political ads are not uploaded to Google for free. Advertising is 99% of the funding that sustains the p
by titzer 1y ago
This thread is full of comments that miss the fact that political ads are not uploaded to Google for free. Advertising is 99% of the funding that sustains the platform and makes Google oodles of money, and when it no longer suits them (read: doesn't generate profit and might be risky), they're dropping the content.
It'd be one thing if it was 20 petabytes of cat videos, but this is content that Google was literally paid to serve to people.
The whole discussion is cosmically ironic.
- raincole 1y agoTV ads are not free either. But I don't think many people expect TV stations to archive every single ad forever. Stadium ads are not free either. But (ditto).
- albumen 1y agoWe're talking political advertising, not all ads. And 'broad'cast advertising is a different beast from hyper-targeted advertising that nobody but the intended recipient sees. In the latter case, political advertising archives offer insight into otherwise hidden advertising.