Google decides Europe's political ad rules are too hard to implement at scale Google has decided the European Union's Regulation on Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising will be so hard to comply with it's better off not trying. The search and ads giant on Thursday announced that it will stop serving political advertising in the EU sometime before October 2025 – when the Regulation (TTPA) …
Its obvious if it is say "vote for Trump" or "vote for Harris". If it is pro abortion rights in the US most could infer which candidate it supports but even if you'd argue that's not certain it is obviously political in nature. What about an ad supporting green energy? One could argue that's political, but the motivation behind the advertising might be to encourage consumers to buy solar panels.
So I don't think Google saying "we won't accept political ads" is going to get them off the hook. Some of those who want to run political ads are going to try to sneak them by, and some will succeed. What's Google say then, "well they didn't tell us it was political how we were to know?"
I don't know anything about the law so maybe Google is bs'ing when they say the law is unworkable and that's why they are dropping political ads, but if that's true and it is equally unworkable to drop political ads because you'll still get in trouble, it could be a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't.
I've just read the article and I don't know the law either. That said, from what I understand, a "political ad" for this law is anything that relates to an upcoming election or referendum. So a pro-abortion ad would be covered by the law if there was a referendum on abortion coming up.
I've no idea whether that would extend to pro-abortion ads if there was no referendum, but there was an election where abortion was considered a major issue. That ambiguity could actually be resolved in the law for what I know, but if it isn't it might be one of Google's reasons.
I have the feeling that a big part of Google's problem is that, even if there was no ambiguity, there is no automated way to figure out whether an ad is covered or not. There is no central database of all elections and referendums. Even if there was, ads do not come pre-tagged, and so-called AIs are not reliable enough to identify something that could land you in court if misidentified.
Google's business model relies strictly on full automation; they can't afford having a human vet ads.
All things considered, I'm fine with the end result. Most political ads give zero or negative information anyway.
How will they have an automated system to vet whether an ad is political or not? Climate change wasn't political until it was. Is an ad for an electric car political? Maybe not, but who knows if that will be the case tomorrow - especially if it mentions something like "buy now before the $7500 tax credit goes away" (I know that's an example from the US, I'm sure people in the EU can come up with similar examples that fit their own political landscape)
Greenpeace for example is registered as a political organisation rather than a charity, so I guess that is your starting point for an ad supporting green energy.
If it is a company advertising their specific solar panels, then that would be commercial, but if it is an ad campaigning for changes in planning regulations to make it easier to install them in your roof or to export the power to the grid, then that would be political.
I always walk past political problems in the USA because everyone sees me as A political drinker with a party problem.
An anonymouse comment (LOL not a typo) - I'm not Brendan Behan who inspired me with his "I am a drinker with writing problems."
Have you actually used google to search for anything recently... it's become so enshitified that you can't find any decent information anymore. I made the mistake of using it recently instead of duckduckgo, and I had to scroll to what was probably page 3 or 4 before i found anything close to what I wanted. The first page was AI, ads and SEO bollocks, the 2nd was all SEO bollocks, often with multiple links to a variety of pages on the same unrelated site that took up 40% of the page.
I remember not to make that mistake again later that same day, used DDG and found what I wanted 5th one down the first page
DDG isn't that great anymore either. They are who I use, half the time I search for something the first page is amazon hits trying to sell me something that partially matches one of the words I searched. I've taken to adding "-amazon" which helps some. At least DDG is up front about it though, they do state that amazon pays them to put amazon links up top.
In other words, they don't have people on the ground who could collect this information, or the mechanisms to take account of local circumstances, and don't want the expense associated with them.
It's probably as neat an illustration as any that accuracy, transparency or accountability aren't financially compatible with a model based on the algorithmic identification of aggregate characteristics of the source and the recipient.
Each party has a designated account with each platform. Only those accounts/parties can post political ads, each ad being easily linked back to the party that authorised it. Limit the spend for ads so that each party has the same amount, and have fixed fees to advertise so that no 'special' deals can be made. Full transparency with all ads and the targeting data being made public within 24hrs of the ad going live.
Ban everything else, make parties liable and identifiable for their ads, stop the flow of 3rd party ads and outside attempts to influence elections.Punish platforms if they allow outside political ads, make flouting these laws criminal, not punishable by fines.
You always have to start by stopping the dirty money flowing into elections/politics.
Sure, but not everything that is political is party political. A lot is about persuading political parties to adopt your position on something, a lot is also about local issues.
On transport for example, all of the parties in my district, with the exception of Reform UK Ltd, support one position on a particular local issue. In the neighbouring district, all of the parties with the exception of Reform UK Ltd support the opposite position. Reform UK Ltd's position is to throw more money at transport, seemingly unaware that much of the existing transport budget gets returned unspent because the two districts are unable to agree on what to do with the money.
You would have thought the way they are selling it as the second coming it could do this before breakfast.
Funny, how a tiny little bit of pressing the sales droids just reveals a long list of things that "AI" can't do.
Why, it's almost as if it's useless.
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