Google says no more shady anonymous web ads – if you want your billboard up, you've got to show us some valid ID On Thursday Google said it will require all advertisers on its platforms to verify their identities, an initiative that aims to make online advertising more transparent by allowing people to see who paid for internet pitches. In 2018, the Chocolate Factory implemented identity verification for political ads, after the extent …
"won't tell you which oil company owns them"
It might take some digging, but as a general rule, every corporation should have registered a human to which you can send a subpoena, with the state that gives them corporate status.
I would expect UK law to be similar.
You might have to do some digging, but it SHOULD be possible to get to the bottom of ANY shadow corporation that's inside the USA. For foreign corporations, not so much... (but that's when the red light should come on and warn you it's possibly manipulative or an outright hoax).
A quick search led to this:
https://corp.delaware.gov/agents/
So a Delaware corporation needs to have a "registered agent" for service of subpoenas, etc. If this is NOT being properly enforced, then a U.S. Federal lawsuit needs to be filed to change this...
In any case if this pertains to the "payer of the ads", and Delaware corporations _ARE_ that shady by definition, you could simply reject doing business with ANY entity incorporated there. [and if that becomes a widespread response, Delaware will have to modify their policies]
However, because I know that many people have opinions about corporations being inherently evil, etc. and aren't familiar with setting one up and what the legal requirements are [in the USA anyway], I'd just like to say that it's probably NOT as bad as you might think.
(IANAL but I've had to deal with them from time to time)
"So a Delaware corporation needs to have a "registered agent" for service of subpoenas, etc."
Great. Except we can't start sending out subpoenas, because we aren't a court. Even if they are breaking a law, we can't subpoena them. We could file complaints, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything will happen. In this situation, though, it doesn't matter about that either because we're after transparency, not enforcement of a law. The corporate subpoena-receiver has no legal duty to tell us things we want to know, such as who put the money in the bank account and who took the money out again to get an ad released. They won't tell us, and there's no requirement for them to do so. So we will get pretty much nothing from this.
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Not sure if you are being serious, but researching these kinds of things (which was an aspect of my job in a previous life) can take an enormous amount of effort, time and money. This is not usually the case with mom and pop companies; at worst you'll end up reaching a cousin, parent or child of the person who has actual control, but bigger organisations tend to have lawyers and accountants with overactive imaginations who come up with mind-numbing schemes, usually for very abstract but not actually nefarious reasons. Those with negotiable honesty amongst the rich and powerful are sort of middle ground: not as hideously complex as (many, not all) big corporations but in the big scheme of things they're small enough to fly under the radar unless and until someone spills the beans.
Which brings us to Panama. Do you know why there were comparatively few Americans in those papers? Being a perceptive person you have probably guessed it: Delaware.
It might take some digging, but as a general rule, every corporation should have registered a human to which you can send a subpoena
The BBC use a wholly fictitious person for TV licencing demands. Nobody changes signature as often as their made up person has, which is a bit of a give away.
In the UK you can, outside of official circles, use any name you like provided you recognise it when approached with it.
right, and for political ads, regardless of the content, they could require that the funder identify himself and/or the organization. then let them say "whatever".
But somehow I doubt it's the way Senator (*cough*) Warren, the senator from Massachusetts that once claimed to be Native American to get affirmative action favoritism, claims it is. She HAS been known to, uh, STRETCH facts to her own favor (read: LIE) after all... [but we can determine this ourselves, without the need of NANNY ISP to do it FOR us, thank you]
In any case, let's just stop the censorship in ALL directions, and JUST let us know who's paying for it.
Show me a lawyer who doesn't stretch the facts...
I'm confused about Warren's Native American claim. Did she do it intentionally to jump the queue, or was she just proud to have a link? I've got a (very) distant relative who led black soldiers in the Civil War, and I'm kind of proud of it. But I doubt that I could prove it with a DNA test as Warren did.
I do like her politics though. She's made a bit of a career attempting to equalise the power of consumers vs the financial business. I think this country needs that right now (as we slide into another recession with most of the post-2008 protections repealed by the current administration).
"I doubt that I could prove it with a DNA test as Warren did."
Uhh... you think Warren *PROVED* Native American heritage? Her DNA test was STATISTICALLY ZERO, less than 0.1% as I recall. That would be at LEAST 10 generations of separation, if I do my math correctly (if it's actually _THAT_ _HIGH_). That as opposed to *me* who DOES have Native American ancestry [Taos tribe from New Mexico, as well as others], and my late uncle once did a geneology study and traced the family tree back to the REAL Pocahontas. yeah no kidding!
Warren is NOT a Native American. It was a LIE, and she did it to get into Harvard. You cannot trust ANYTHING she says. You know she's LYING when her mouth opens.
I wonder how long it will take for malicious advertisers to find a loophole in this. Google already allows loading ads containing javascript with very few limits--for example, javascript that redirects the browser to another page, which is malicious enough. Frequently, that type of ad is used for the "Your computer has a virus" scam. If they're not scanning for or preventing that, they're certainly not doing that broad a job inspecting things. So the only question for me is whether they accept random numbers without verification or whether someone has to get public documents from someone else's company and submit them.
Its a good first step especially if all advertisers have to prove personal ID and not just company documents.
I expect its impact over next few months will be surprisingly positive at reducing frauds.
Yes there will be loopholes but not too hard to gradually tighten them up
I like your optimism, but I am far too cynical to think that has any chance. It wouldn't be that hard to scan the provided scripts and see if they bounce users to other pages. A list of regexes would take out all the easy ways of doing that, requiring a sneaky method of doing so. Yet, if I read the scripts of such ads, they're not bothering to do anything sneaky. That means Google isn't checking. Why should I believe they're going to act differently with this information?
The "who supplied this ad" link will simply go to an ad agency or PR company. Presumably they have no obligation to reveal who their client is and then if their client is a single person or think tank they have no obligation to say where they got the money.
That's what they did here with $5K limits on corporate donations. Certain oil/mining companies simply hired a bunch of consultants. Coincidentally the consultants then each donated $5K personally, of their own free will, to a campaign for the candidate who looked favourably on the extraction industries.
> Coincidentally the consultants then each donated $5K personally, of their own free will, to a campaign for the candidate who looked favourably on the extraction industries.
A long time ago there was a family "friend" who did something like that. He was tasked by a very well known organisation to fly a suitcase to a certain other organisation (enemies of my enemies, etc.) The certain other organisation then got in touch with their donors to thank them for the five million…
Did you say five million? But we sent you ten million!
I run a marketing solutions company and we've been buying Google Ads for over 10 years. Of course, Google knows the identity of the Advertiser. If Google wanted to, it can also verify some or all of the ID by using the bank account or credit card information submitted by the Advertiser. (For the uninitiated, it's impossible to set up a Google Ads account without adding at least one funding source). But what Google is doing with its new measure, I'm guessing, is seeking additional info like incorporation location, making the advertiser info public, and simultaneously giving a chance to the advertiser to clean up their accounts, if required, and submit the info regarding name, address, incorporation location etc. that they want their prospects and customers to know them by. For example, when I set up my Google Ads account, it was in my personal name. Even if I subsequently run my company ads on the same account, it doesn't matter since the ID is between me and Google. But, if my ID is going to be shown to the public, I'd rather change the name to my company name, which is how I want my ad to be seen.
In 2018, the Chocolate Factory implemented identity verification for political ads, after the extent of 2016 media funded by foreign groups to sway or muddy elections became apparent.
Even had Russiagate not been such an utter crock of shit in the first place, It's very difficult to see how scary foreign political fake advertisements meant to confuddle and bemuse the moronate are in the slightest way more vile and appalling that the ones made by the regular parties and their lobbyist masters.
This is excellent to reduce fraud especially if advertisers have to prove personal ID and not just company documents.
Looking forward to it being rolled out globally. I expect its impact over next few months will be surprisingly positive at reducing frauds.
Yes there will be loopholes but not too hard to gradually tighten them up.
Hopefully Facebook will follow suit
Unless I totally misinterpreted what you wrote...
Please do NOT encourage Android to LOCK DOWN like Apple, unlesse it's just for the use of google ad services. One of the BIGGEST advantages of Android development is the ability to load YOUR APK on ANY Android device, if the end-user jumps through a couple of minor hoops, WITHOUT their "store" in between - that and FREE DEV TOOLS.
But yeah - locking down the AD NETWORK, which goes through google's ad services as I understand it, THIS would probably be a GOOD thing.
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