Google To Limit Targeting of Political Ads (reuters.com) 76
Google said on Wednesday that it will stop giving advertisers the ability to target election ads using data such as public voter records and general political affiliations. Reuters reports: Google said on Wednesday it would start limiting audience targeting for election ads to age, gender and general location at a postal code level. Previously, verified political advertisers could also target ads using data such as whether the users were left-leaning, right-leaning or independent. Google said political advertisers can still do contextual targeting, such as serving ads to people reading a certain story or watching a particular video.
The company will begin enforcing the new approach in the United Kingdom within a week, ahead of the country's general election on Dec. 12. It said it would begin enforcing it in the European Union by the end of the year and in the rest of the world starting on Jan. 6, 2020. "Given recent concerns and debates about political advertising, and the importance of shared trust in the democratic process, we want to improve voters' confidence in the political ads they may see on our ad platforms," Scott Spencer, vice president of product management for Google Ads, said in the blog post. Google added examples to its misrepresentation policy to show that it would not allow false claims about election results or the eligibility of political candidates. Google also added examples to its ad policies to clarify that it prohibits doctored and manipulated media.
The company will begin enforcing the new approach in the United Kingdom within a week, ahead of the country's general election on Dec. 12. It said it would begin enforcing it in the European Union by the end of the year and in the rest of the world starting on Jan. 6, 2020. "Given recent concerns and debates about political advertising, and the importance of shared trust in the democratic process, we want to improve voters' confidence in the political ads they may see on our ad platforms," Scott Spencer, vice president of product management for Google Ads, said in the blog post. Google added examples to its misrepresentation policy to show that it would not allow false claims about election results or the eligibility of political candidates. Google also added examples to its ad policies to clarify that it prohibits doctored and manipulated media.
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The Googles and the facebooks that get paid to give you the political ad you want to see are the smaller problem.
The real problem is the actual lack of limits on political spending. Fix that, and most other issues will fix themselves automagically.
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The real problem is the actual lack of limits on political spending. Fix that, and most other issues will fix themselves automagically.
Indeed. It was pathetic how the Koch brothers were able to just buy the presidency for Jeb Bush.
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C'mon Bill, are you really going to attempt to make the multi-billion dollar purchase of the gop over the course of decades of super-private retreats, unrestricted donations, astro-turfing pacs, etc... look like it was just a one-off attempt to get Jeb into the Oval Office?
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The First Amendment includew freedom of the press, which isn't really the institution so much as literal printing presses, the means of mass production of speech, such as pamphlets. People could and did outlaw private printing presses as a method of control over speech.
And just as speech continues into modern electronics, so does mass production. Ads are modern mass production.
This is what the Supreme Court meant when it said money is speech -- something like 80% of political donations are used for ads.
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One final thing, several presidential candidates are threatening to hurt Google and facebook and Twitter because they won't silence political opposition. This vile behavior and unconstitutional.
So these companies are shutting down all ads rather than some (to appease politicians) to avoid bias accusations.
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The First Amendment includew freedom of the press, which isn't really the institution so much as literal printing presses the means of mass production of speech, such as pamphlets.
It's really both.
This is what the Supreme Court meant when it said money is speech -- something like 80% of political donations are used for ads.
No, that isn't what they meant. They meant lobbying. They wanted to make sure they could keep getting bribes, er, I mean campaign contributions from corporations.
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You heard it here first. This is why drinkypoo shouldnt be allowed to vote. Before you are allowed to pick who should be in charge, you should first know who is in charge of what.
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You heard it here first. This is why drinkypoo shouldnt be allowed to vote. Before you are allowed to pick who should be in charge, you should first know who is in charge of what.
They don't operate in a vacuum, kid.
WTF? (Score:2)
If it’s that “dangerous” for political ads than google shouldn’t allow it for ANY advertising on ANY targeting level.
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Limits on targeting aren't limits on exposure, oh, skywise one.
The limits on targeted advertising discussed in TFS appear to be an "effort" on the part of Google to deal with the problem of information bubbles that targeted content and advertising create. The information bubbles are, indeed, dangerous, because they invariably result in bias, disregard for the facts one does not like, spread of fake news and what not - dangers that are always there but have been bigly embiggened by the US social manipulation
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Information bubbles are created by the end user. We used to call it confirmation bias, but inherently, people will entrench and defend their own position.
On the other hand, especially in politics, people claiming others are in an information bubble are often in their own information bubble and wonder why the other bubbles aren't joining them. Google and most California companies may have this issue, everyone statistically speaking leans far left thus anyone not far left is considered far right and must be r
Re: WTF? (Score:2)
Google Knows... (Score:4, Insightful)
The scary part is Google having a database of the political alignment of most people on the planet, not so much that they might or not sell it.
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Data published by the Census of April 1, 2020 will give zipcode-by-zipcode political leanings, so Google is making it harder but not impossible to target political ads.
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They are still tracking political affiliations and that is for one reason only, to target you and your family for voting wrong and selling that information. This is an extreme corruption of the political process designed by corporate evil to undermine the democratic anonymous vote, really sick stuff that should be illegal. Only political parties should be able to track that and only for members all other organisation should be strictly forbidden from tracking legal political affiliations, it's only true fun
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Amusing the amount of hatred for the carriers of deceptive information among all these outraged posters but almost no dislike for the crooked politicians who are creating the lies designed to manipulate their targets. I wonder why that is? Surely the perpetrator is the bad actor, not the postman?
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They are still tracking political affiliations and that is for one reason only, to target you and your family for voting wrong and selling that information. This is an extreme corruption of the political process designed by corporate evil to undermine the democratic anonymous vote, really sick stuff that should be illegal.
You do realize that voter registration rolls are available from practically every democracy around the world? In most US states [ncsl.org] you can get name, address, phone number, and declared political party affiliation (if any). Some provide year of birth, some provide date of registration and which ward and precinct the registration is in. Some provide sex of the voter. A great many provide voter history (where history in this case is a record of when the person showed up at a polling place to vote, not what th
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Google rarely if ever sells the data it has on people. This is because this data is bread and butter of the company, and they would much rather use it themselves and have those that would want to buy it instead buy targeted advertising on a continuous basis than buy data once.
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The scary part is Google having a database of the political alignment
In most states, voter registration and party affiliation are public information.
not so much that they might or not sell it.
Google sells targeted advertising.
They do not sell information.
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In the EU, which is the context of this story, political affiliation is one of the specially protected classes of personal data. Google shouldn't even be holding it without explicit informed consent.
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not so much that they might or not sell it.
Google sells targeted advertising.
They do not sell information.
Yes, they rent it out. Which doesn't change the scariness of what he's talking about.
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Why do so many people think that Google would sell it's most valuable asset?
Maybe they are confused by companies who do sell personal data because they can't monetize it themselves, but Google obviously has an advertising business that uses that asset. Why would they destroy their core business by selling the one thing that sets it apart and from which it derives most of its value?
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Why do so many people think that Google would sell it's most valuable asset?
Maybe they are confused by companies who do sell personal data because they can't monetize it themselves, but Google obviously has an advertising business that uses that asset. Why would they destroy their core business by selling the one thing that sets it apart and from which it derives most of its value?
They have been essentially renting it, by selling targeted advertising.
So they are going to nobly stop renting it, well sort of (you know, the fine story we are talking about) ... hmm. So now how is it valuable to them? For political purposes of their own?
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Renting implies that the person renting the data has access to it. They don't. Google keeps it all secret, all they can do is trust that Google is displaying their ads to the demographics they claim to be.
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They keep it "secret" but you can easily determine who's what from the responses. That only gives you information on respondents, but it still does that. And those are the people you want data on, anyway, the suckers who will click.
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So Google haven't taken steps to prevent other companies stealing their most valuable asset using the techniques that they themselves use? Seems unlikely.
I'd like to see an example of someone using Google ads to identify an individual.
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So Google haven't taken steps to prevent other companies stealing their most valuable asset using the techniques that they themselves use? Seems unlikely.
There's literally no way to stop it. The credit card companies have always faced the same problem.
I'd like to see an example of someone using Google ads to identify an individual.
That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. They use your browser to identify you. They use the fact that you clicked on their ad campaign, with a unique clickback for each set of targeted demographics, to learn specific things about you.
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Right, they use their own data that they gather themselves. Not Google's data.
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They use the data that they gather themselves to get a window into Google's data. This is actually really simple.
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Why wait? Turn off now (Score:3, Informative)
Google now liable (Score:1)
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That is backwards. The law prevents liability from crappy or biased editing. (Normally that turns you into a publisher, so anything that slips through makes you liable.) This protection is seen as the single biggest thing allowing American dominance in the Internet age. Most other countries allow liability lawsuits for companies that allow public posting, greatly hampering growth
By the way, politicians from both parties are threatening to remove the protections for companies that don't censor in ways th
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Re: They think this will hurt Trump (Score:1)
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In other news, North Korea says its democratic. It's in the name in fact - Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Re: They think this will hurt Trump (Score:1)
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You got me there.
Re: They think this will hurt Trump (Score:1)
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It's the same model as China, where the model is copied from. You have "parties" that operate at behest of The Party.
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As long as Trump has support from Murdoch and Fox, I don't think Google shutting down a few ads is going to be a huge deal.
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Running ads on media that reaches beyond the core audience is critical in modern political process. It's why in US, it's largely illegal for mass media publishers to reject political ads.
This is simply Silicon Valley playing their "we're a publisher, no we're a platform" game again to suit their needs of the moment.
Re:They think this will hurt Trump (Score:4, Informative)
Disney didn't acquire Fox News as part of the deal, just the Fox entertainment stuff.
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I don't know who is actually in charge of the Murdoch media empire these days but if the recent 2019 Australian federal election (and the crap the Murdoch media spewed during the campaign) is any guide its clear that the Australian parts of the empire (at least) are still very much conservative in its political viewpoint (and in which politicians it supports and uses its power to help get elected)
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Murdoch himself said he wasn't in the conservative news business, but in the money business. Having a news organization whose regular nightly drumbeat wasn't how awful Americans were was a genius move.
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Murdoch himself said he wasn't in the conservative news business, but in the money business.
The conservatives have most of the money. QED, Murdoch is effectively in the conservative news business.
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Notice how I made no judgement on quality of Trump's administration. I merely walked though the logic of how to depose of the man when he is massively more successful than his opponents at securing election funds.
Yet "Orange Man Bad" was the only thing that you had to answer it.
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Where should I inquire for my payment for whatever it is that I'm shilling for?
Translation: We filter the shit we don't like... (Score:1)
I, for one, welcome our new technocratic overlords being forced to eat a giant bag of syphilitic dicks in AIDS sauce.
Back to old school (Score:2)
They'll have to build mailing lists again.
Welcome to the good censor (Score:1)
One side of US politics is allowed.
Want to publish, be the media, comment, link, hope the good censor approves your side of US politics.
Ministry of Truth (Score:2)
False, eh? Just who are these guardians of truth — and how many sexes, for example, do mammals have, in their informed opinion?
Banned (Score:2)
What's the takeaway from this? Best not to allow political ads or you'll piss off powerful politicians?
Wtf.
"When people fear government, there is tyranny. When government fears the people, there is freedom."
Goodnight, America.
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In a representative democracy, the government should have to be worried about the people destroying the government in an election. In the States, it seems the billionaires can just shout over any new parties to make sure the established party, I mean 2 parties, always get voted in by almost 100% of those who bother to vote.
I see (Score:2)
Forget Gerrymandering (Score:2)
If it's not obvious already, Google considers themselves in control of the political levers of the countries in which they operate. While they don't directly decide policy, they believe they have the ability, and right to control access to the voters.
Democracy is quickly becoming obsolete.
Big whup! (Score:2)
So? Do people think Google is the only company that targets advertising, or that Google is even the best company at it?
I worked for a company called Maxpoint a few years ago. They promoted a concept called "digital zip codes". Basically, more than most people would ever believe can be inferred about you from your address. Their technology broke the map down into much smaller areas than a zip-code and tagged them with "indicators" that a client could use to target their ads. You don't need to know, or n
So, Google is admitting that voters (Score:1)
So, Google is admitting that many voters are sheep and don't think about things like issues -- their own positions on them and the positions of the candidates and the degree to which they match -- but instead vote based on ads.
Good to know.
Maybe a bunch of us could pool our money and buy some ads that discourage voter turnout by the dim and the easily goaded.