
Google to restrict political adverts worldwide - ggambetta
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50498166
======
vergessenmir
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.

~~~
notatoad
>However, the idea of removing ads because of 'false claims' can only lead to
censorship in the future

you might be right, but the reality is that the world has a large problem with
disinformation and false claims _right now_ that's causing real negative
consequences for real people. Stopping the spread of false information is a
good thing that should be done.

Letting blatant lies control our political processes now just to prevent
future potential censorship in the future is not a good compromise.

~~~
atomi
Personally, I'm conflicted. Your argument rests upon the idea that people's
minds can be "poisoned" with false information. And I understand that. But at
some point you have to hold people responsible for believing stuff that is
blatantly false. There was a time that, if you believed in Bat Boy [1], most
people rightly thought you were a bozo.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_\(character\))

~~~
djaque
I too want to believe in individual people having the ability to determine
fact from fiction. The problem I see, however, is the power dynamic nowadays.
What chance does the average person have in rooting out disinformation when
it's being spread by interests using million dollar marketing campaigns and
rooms filled with PhDs? The average person can't really invest the time in
becoming an expert in all of the problems that affect us even if they want to
and you need to rely on other people at some point.

~~~
droithomme
These hordes of extremely naive people that are so easily fooled: if they
exist, why should they be allowed to vote at all in the first place?

------
dogma1138
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.

~~~
cabaalis
Banning them would just further extend the isolation/echo chambers created by
social media.

If you have a political message, it makes sense to force you to tailor that
message on very broad terms. Hearing something you might disagree with is part
of life and very important to critical thinking.

This is not intended to be an opinion on false statements in political
advertising.

~~~
TomMckenny
Paid adverting artificiality maintains and promotes ideas backed by money
rather than having ideas become widespread solely based on validity.

If we believe in the "market place of ideas" where validity and accuracy are
the sole determiners of success then none should have artificial support. So
all ads should be banned. If an idea fails in this market place, then it is
reasonable to assume it is a bad idea. Leveraging it is just as bad when done
by Soviet approved posters or Exxon paid for ads.

The echo chamber is an example where paid ads will actually _worsen_ the
situation: Ads are aimed at target audiences driving them into more extremes
by seeing exaggerated or false statement they would not have seen if there
were no ads. Also, those echo chambers backed by moneyed interests will thrive
and expand while those not money backed will fade. So instead of at least
having some hope of uneasy balance between two extremes, you get head long
plunge into just one of them.

~~~
kansface
> If we believe in the "market place of ideas" where validity and accuracy are
> the sole determiners of success then none should have artificial support.

The "market place of ideas" makes no mention of the speed, likelihood of
transmission, or intended audience. The best candidate with the best message
still needs to get the message out in a timely fashion (before the election
and to the core constituency!). The best product at the best price doesn't
matter if the business runs out of money before it can drum up sales... not to
mention, real world concerns like collective action problems.

I'd argue the market place of ideas is only the best idea in comparison to the
rest.

------
OzzyB
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
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
...or the relative value of Google's ads is decreased and advertisers take
their money elsewhere

~~~
wutbrodo
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
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
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.

------
skizm
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
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
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
Everyone wants to control the narrative; this is simply the first time you've
been faced with a right-wing POTUS that is capable to some extent of doing so,
and it's helped you forget that all political parties are putting forward a
narrative, because partisanship is a hefty drug. This is nothing new, which is
both good and bad; it's not a novel crisis, but it's also something we can't
get rid of.

------
raxxorrax
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
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
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.

------
buboard
> 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
>> 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 :)

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

~~~
tropo
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.

------
yters
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.

------
throwGuardian
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)

~~~
ggggtez
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?

~~~
throwGuardian
I was referring to Google USA, as the timing of this announcement right before
peak political US ad-spend is quite clearly a stab at US politics.

As for political affiliation, in your estimate, what is Google-USA's make up?
Also, if non-US employees are making political censorship decisions on behalf
of Google, isn;t the foreign interference? All that intersectional talk from
Googlers that has made it into _unbiased_ AI truths(??) in their search
autocomplete, like "men can have [periods, babies, ...]" really points to
overwhelming Republican bent at Google. Right?

~~~
ggggtez
I guess you missed the point: you are guessing at the distribution of
political leanings of thousands of people, and then using your guess as
"proof" of bias.

Me guessing a different number doesn't change the fact that it would be a
guess. It's not evidence of bias, and trying to prove that your guess is true
is at best circular logic (they are biased so there must be more Democrats,
which in turn... Proves that they are biased??). I reject this idea on the
simple truth of making logical arguments based on facts. Guesses are not
evidence.

As for the rest of your post, you seem to be confusing search autocomplete
with double click ads, which shows a gross misunderstanding of what is even
being discussed.

~~~
throwGuardian
> As for the rest of your post, you seem to be confusing search autocomplete
> with double click ads, which shows a gross misunderstanding of what is even
> being discussed

As for this nugget, if shows a gross misunderstanding of what we're debating:
whether Google is biased towards one party.

But processing your full response - nitpicking on the exact % of Democrats is
a masterful tangent from the crux - that Google is likely not going to censor
fairly. And the only reason I can think of for this bike shedding [1] is
likely because you know it's true.

[1]: [https://bit.ly/2XA2wAx](https://bit.ly/2XA2wAx)

~~~
ggggtez
It's not really kosher to throw out claims with no basis in fact, and then say
it's bike shedding if someone calls you on it. If you want to have an
intellectual discussion about serious issues, you shouldn't open with making
things up that you think make your options look more authoritative.

If we want to have a discussion, we need to start by being intellectually
honest. Part of that is not making claims of facts that don't exist.

On a very real level, are you saying nonsense. Do you think that a human is
reading what you type into Google and saying "haha, time to auto complete this
with my liberal bias!!". How exactly do you think this technology works? And
why do you think it had anything to do with this announcement about political
ads? There is so much illiteracy to unpack in a short space.

~~~
throwGuardian
Ignoring the ad hominem suggestions of illiteracy and stupidity _only_ because
you are willing to listen.

1\. Google is majority Democratic, at least by a spread of 40% (D:R) if you
simply assume the employee pool to mirror Democrat:Republican ratios of the
counties Google HQ and branches are located in the bay area. [1]. Further,
this is only the lower bound, as Google's employee pool tends to be college
educated with postgraduate degrees (M.S, PhD, ...), which leans 63% democratic
[2]. Further, Google is legendary for it's recruitment of the activist left,
and minorities, with an even greater proclivity towards the Democratic party.
So yes - you are bike-shedding when you make a mountain of the 95% claim,
because the spread between Democrats and Republicans is large, nay mammoth
enough for it to be irrelevant. And I bet you knew all of this, but wanted to
engage in trivialities anyways.

2\. Google search suggestions show falsehoods on certain terms like "men can "
precisely because of manually inserted political bias into training models
that the AI is based on. Google has a whole ethics committee whose entire job
is precisely this - play "judge" on what AI models are "ethical and fair",
manually intervene with oodles of their own corrections & interpretations -
never mind the facts behind the issue. Here is the AI ethics committee
explaining manual interventions [3], and here [4] is the explanation on why
Google search suggestions show what they do, with the AI engineer confirming
it 6],despite having ZERO correlation on Google search trends for those terms
(tsk tsk manually inserted political bias) . Also note that the contents of
this video were the subject of a congressional hearing [5], in which Google
confirmed it's veracity, but still maintained political neutrality blaming any
appearance of bias on individual employees.

3\. "why do you think it had anything to do with this announcement about
political ads". It has __everything __to do with political ads, because Google
has been repeatedly caught red-handed in acts of bias against conservatives on
YouTube, search results, political ad-spend, ..... (my GGM comment cites some
instances). They 've confirmed that their news app has an editorial agenda
(hint: left leaning), and senior employees have been caught on record stating
they'll do whatever it takes to skew the system against a Trump re-election.
So yes - in aggregate, Google has a __massive __leftist basis, and every iota
of their business decision making imbibes these biases. My prediction is that
they __will not __censor leftist political ads, but will put any right leaning
ads through hell before letting them see light of day.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_locations_by_voter_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_locations_by_voter_registration)

[2]: [https://www.people-press.org/2018/03/20/1-trends-in-party-
af...](https://www.people-press.org/2018/03/20/1-trends-in-party-affiliation-
among-demographic-groups/2_6-10/)

[3]: [https://youtu.be/csP4z8dR6X0?t=259](https://youtu.be/csP4z8dR6X0?t=259)

[4]: [https://youtu.be/csP4z8dR6X0?t=429](https://youtu.be/csP4z8dR6X0?t=429)

[5]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX6LlEcJ4nw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX6LlEcJ4nw)

[6]: [https://youtu.be/csP4z8dR6X0?t=536](https://youtu.be/csP4z8dR6X0?t=536)

PS: The hubris in this statement!! -

> "haha, time to auto complete this with my liberal bias!!". How exactly do
> you think this technology works? And why do you think it had anything to do
> with this announcement about political ads? There is so much illiteracy to
> unpack in a short space.

------
rtkwe
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
[https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-
ads/home](https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/home)

~~~
cartoonworld
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?

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

------
dillondoyle
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.

------
rasz
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)

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

------
friendlybus
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.

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

------
new_here
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
But it doesn't stop "concerned citizens" or "non-governmental organisations"
from spreading misinformation about others.

~~~
new_here
Just limit it so that only verified parties can mention their own brands.

~~~
lmm
That does nothing to stop a "swift boat" style smear campaign that simply
doesn't mention anything about the alternative.

------
dominik
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589711](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589711)

------
plntd
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.

------
Merrill
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.

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

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

~~~
miguelmota
So you're willing to pay a subscription fee to use Google Search, Google Docs,
Google Maps, Youtube, etc?

~~~
StuffedParrot
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
> 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
> 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
> 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

