Google to lift its postelection political-ad ban on Thursday
The policy shift comes just ahead of two key Senate races in Georgia.
After banning postelection political ads in November to limit the spread of misinformation, Google told advertisers Wednesday that it would lift the ban starting Dec. 10. The policy change arrives just ahead of two key Senate runoff races in Georgia that are set to take place Jan. 5.
The announcement was made in an email sent to advertisers and seen by CNET.
"To protect users, we regularly pause ads for a discrete period over unpredictable, 'sensitive' events when ads can be used to exploit the event or amplify misleading information," Google said in the email. "While we no longer consider this post-election period to be a sensitive event, we will continue to rigorously enforce our ads policies, which strictly prohibit demonstrably false information that could significantly undermine trust in elections or the democratic process."
Advertisers affected by Google's policy include those mentioning a current state or federal officeholder or candidate, political party or ballot measure, along with any ads keyed to election-related search queries.
In a later blog post Wednesday, Google said its global Trust and Safety teams were already working through potential election-related threat scenarios and abuse vectors.
"These teams work in a variety of roles to help develop and enforce our policies in an apolitical and non-partisan way, monitor our platforms for abuse, and protect users from everything from account hijackings and disinformation campaigns to misleading content and inauthentic activity," Google said in the post. "We estimate that we spent at least $1 billion over the past year on content moderation systems and processes."
The company added that it's already looking toward upcoming 2021 elections in the US, the Netherlands, Japan, Israel, Ecuador and many other countries.
