Google Inc. is restricting how political candidates use its advertisement tools in a set of policy changes it published on 20th November 2019 that may change how elections unfold in the digital arena going forward. Google announced that if not the most radical, move taken by technology giants to reduce the false information shared by political campaigns on the platform. Google will no longer allow campaigns to be based on certain political attributes. This move may make a political advertisement on Google is less effective than the previous cycle.
Campaigns will target voters by gender, age, and location through Google products (from search to YouTube). However, valuable advertiser choices (such as “customer matching”) can be used by political candidates who can upload potential voter’s emails or phone numbers in campaigns and matched and link them to online profiles. Google notified the change directly to the 2020 campaign on Wednesday, i.e. 20th November 2019. After a few weeks, Twitter completely banned political advertising on its platform, Google made the decision and immediately put new pressure on Google’s main rival in digital advertising: Facebook. The social media giant also said it is also considering changing its targeted practices, although some executives are sometimes overwhelmed, most recently in an interview with Mr. Peter Kafka at the Code Media conference on Monday, i.e. 18th November.
Facebook stubbornly refused to conduct a fact-checking on political advertising, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the ability of candidates to express their ability to speak, even if it meant lying in an advertisement. YouTube and Google also responsible to let politicians lie in the ads, Google did not alter or resolve this policy in the announcement on Wednesday. Google does say it will take new steps to curb the wrong information because it has changed its policy to ban the display of “deep fakes” and apparent wrong advertising.
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