New policies are being implemented across the Google gamut of online tech products that will make it even more difficult for candidates running for political office to target specific audiences on social media.
Further limiting certain types of online political advertising is Google's way of protecting the "integrity" of elections, the company says, even as it seeks to restrict "misinformation" and "doctored media" – meaning conservative viewpoints and funny "meme" videos and photos, respectively – from reaching its platforms.
Following a barrage of criticism by Leftists against Facebook for the supposed role it played in running "intentionally misleading" ads for President Trump prior to his election, the tech cabal, including Google, has been grasping at more censorship as the only way forward.
Google says it will soon only allow political ads that target users based on age, gender, and location at the postal code level. The so-called "granular" aspects of target audiences will no longer be exposed to such advertising, meaning political ads will have to be broad or nothing.
"Political advertisers can, of course, continue to do contextual targeting, such as serving ads to people reading or watching a story about, say, the economy," the company revealed in a blog post.
"This will align our approach to election ads with long-established practices in media such as TV, radio, and print, and result in election ads being more widely seen and available for public discussion. (Of course, some media, like direct mail, continues to be targeted more granularly.)"
For more related news about how Google and other tech giants are tampering with the election process, be sure to check out Censorship.news.
Google wants only deep-pocketed establishment candidates to be able to run ads online
These changes will first be implemented in the United Kingdom ahead of its upcoming general election on December 12. By the end of 2019, they will further be rolled out across the European Union. And by January 6, the United States and the rest of the world will experience the ban.
According to reports, Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub is largely behind the push to ban granular microtargeting of election ads, as is the Democrat Party, which has long contended that Trump "stole" the 2016 presidential election by spreading "fake news."
But it would seem as though Google and the rest of Big Tech are the ones spreading fake news by silencing it on their platforms – or at least silencing what they claim is fake news, which is often just independent journalism that contradicts mainstream media propaganda.
What this all means, of course, is that it's going to cost political advertisers a whole lot more money to run ads moving forward, seeing as how they're being forced by Google to take a "shotgun" approach that blankets far more users than just the intended audience with political ads.
In other words, only those with deep pockets will be able to afford the type of political advertising that Google says is "fair" and that promotes "democracy" – and that fills Google's coffers with record-breaking profits.
"Google said it's updating its overall ads policy to prohibit 'misleading claims about the census process, and ads or destinations making demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process,' because of course saying it hopes to boost revenue by 'doing no evil' seems just a tad gauche," reports Zero Hedge.
"Google previously imposed certain regulations on political advertising for U.S. federal races last year, and it said it would expand those existing regulations to cover US state-level candidates and officeholders, ballot measures and ads that mention federal or state political parties. Google reported $127 million in revenue from US political ads since June 2018, a small amount of the company’s overall sales," this report concludes, noting that the new rules will apply to ads on Google Search, YouTube, and on websites that utilize Google's ad-buying software.
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