Google said it won’t allow political ads on its platforms until after the day of inauguration due to violent riots at the Capitol last week.
In a letter to advertisers on Wednesday, the company said the suspension covered any advertisements relating to candidates, the election or outcome, the impending presidential inauguration, impeachment proceedings, the Capitol riots, or planned protests about any of these Related topics. There are no exceptions for news or merchandise advertising.
The break comes into effect on Thursday and lasts at least until January 21st. Google is the largest advertising seller on the Internet. In addition to displaying advertisements on its own services like search engines and YouTube, the company operates a powerful advertising platform and exchange that other websites and publishers rely on. The policy change was previously reported by Axios.
Sundar Pichai, the executive director of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, told the Reuters Next conference on Wednesday that the company had made significant changes to how it handled political ads and misinformation in elections, but admitted more work was needed.
“The Internet as a whole has to come to terms with what kind of information can be spread,” said Pichai. “There is definitely more to do on our side.”
Google treated last week’s riot as a “sensitive event,” a label usually given to natural disasters or mass shootings to ban advertisements designed to exploit the tragedy. Google applied this policy a month after the election, banning political ads to prevent advertising from spreading misinformation. Last week, in the immediate aftermath of the uprising, Google initially stopped accepting ads related to the event.
After the polls closed on November 3, Facebook also restricted political ads in the United States to minimize the spread of election-related misinformation.
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