Google To Halt Political Ads After Polls Close, Amid Worries Over Delayed Results



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Google is the latest tech company to tighten its election-related policies ahead of November’s vote.

 

Denis Charlet/AFP via Getty Images



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Denis Charlet/AFP via Getty Images


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Google notified advertisers of the decision on Friday. It did not give a time frame for how long the ban would last.

«We will carefully examine a number of factors before deciding to lift this policy for advertisers and share updates as we have them,» Google said in the letter to advertisers, which was first reported by Axios.

The block will apply to ads running on all of Google’s ad-serving platforms, including YouTube. It covers all ads that mention state or federal elections, candidates, ballot measures, political parties or elected officials, as well as ads placed against election-related searches.

Google said it was applying its «sensitive event policy» to the post-election period. That prevents advertisers from running content that «potentially capitalizes on or lacks reasonable sensitivity towards a natural disaster, conflict, death, public health emergency, or other tragic event.» Google applied the policy to block ads related to COVID-19 earlier this year.


Politics
Facebook Clamps Down On Posts, Ads That Could Undermine U.S. Presidential Election

As the election nears, online platforms have been tightening their rules to stop the spread of misinformation about voting and the legitimacy of election results.

Facebook said it will not accept any new political ads in the week before November 3. While it will allow political advertising to resume after Election Day, a Facebook spokesman said this week the company will reject political ads «that claim victory before the results of the 2020 election have been declared.»

Twitter banned political advertising altogether last year. It has said it will label or remove posts that claim victory before results are official or attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.

Google has also removed suggestions from its autocomplete search feature that could be viewed as being for or against a particular candidate or party.

Editor’s note: Google and Facebook are among NPR’s financial supporters.

  • 2020 election
  • political ads
  • Google



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