Political advertising on Google
transparencyreport.google.com
transparencyreport.google.com
This would essentially help make citizens united null/void at least so far as social media/search engine ad buys are considered...
fb and goog have a captive market. no competitor is going to sell ads to their customers. they would lose money and that's it.
Many publishers use more than one ad network to maximize their income, so advertisers can just move to the other networks.
Follow @pinboard on Twitter for nice juxtapositions of the "we want to be neutral" language of a lot of the platforms, versus where they're putting their money. Example:
https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00428623
They lobby for net neutrality, patent reform, immigration reform and similar issues.
This page has more information about Google's political activities in general:
https://www.google.com/publicpolicy/transparency.html
I think Google is much more transparent about this than other companies.
https://donationsfrom.tech/google
And if you dig into your own link you'll see that.
If Google really wanted to, they could find plenty of candidates who support the single issue Google cares about and are also generally decent people; it's not like there's only been one such candidate in the entire history of the universe, as you seem to be implying. But Google doesn't want to, and as a result Google ends up directly supporting candidates who will go on to do awful things, and sweeping it under the rug -- as with so many other Google problems -- by saying "well, the automated system decided to support him". You don't get to dodge the responsibility for that.
So if you're a billionaire, you can run an ad campaign for yourself (either as a candidate or to promote issues you care about), but several thousand citizens can't come together to crowdfund an ad campaign to talk about the same thing?
That is, in effect, what you are saying.
I think special interests and corporations and billionaires should NOT be allowed to run ads AT all, unless they're personally running for office themselves.
Candidates should be able to take donations but only from real citizens, and only up to a certain limit.
Ideally, politicians would have a limit on how much they can spend on ads per quarter, to make it more 'fair' for everyone running, or hell give everyone equal budgets.
They can then take personal small donations from masses to build up their campaign coffers but cannot accept donations from lobbyists, corporations, etc... This would ensure more even-ness and that the person who wins will win because of their message/support instead of having more money to throw at it.
This is already the case in the US. Candidates can only take donations that are tied to individuals, and up to a specified limit per donor. And those lists (along with their employers) are all publicly disclosed, to ensure that companies cannot funnel donations illegally through their employees. (Incidentally, that's not true in many European countries, where corporations are allowed to donate directly without having to tie that money to an individual).
> Where do you think pac's get most their money? From corporations, billionaires, special interests..you think small donor's donate to most pacs?
There are a whole lot of PACs that are focused on specific issues relevant to particular demographics. For these groups, this is literally the only way for them to launch coordinated and organized campaigns to advocate for themselves, because none of their members is independently wealthy enough to fund it directly. Oftentimes, they're speaking up about issues that don't have the support of any elected official in the first place, and publicizing their message is the important first step towards building up the public pressure to get some elected officials on their side in the first place.
If you take that away from them, you're basically saying that they should have no right to speak out about the issues that affect them, but their well-funded, well-organized corporate opponents, billionaire self-funded candidates, and wealthy incumbent politicians all can.
So out with the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood and every other advocacy group? There is a reason we have the First Amendment.
run ads about climate change all you want, just don't mention any politician by name in a positive or negative light... Only that campaign/politician can mention themselves and/or their opponent - though part of me would like negative opponent-based ads done away with too..I hate those.. but w/e...that's probably too much to ask for.
I'd like to see a time come when the only ads you see for a poltician are the ones that end w/ 'My name is ___ and I approve this message' and the ONLY person they talk about is themselves and/or their family and people they work with in a positive light. Instead of degrading their opponent. Some of Bernie's ads were perfect examples -- his America ad was amazing and just awesome and it didn't degrade Clinton or attack her, it instead elicited strong emotions of hope.
France has a similar system. Tight restrictions on mentioning a party or candidate within a certain window before an election. We'd have trouble with that in America, though, because of the First Amendment. It would also shift power to those who can go on TV, attract attention to their blogs and otherwise organically inculcate attention through the press.
> the ONLY person they talk about is themselves and/or their family and people they work with in a positive light. Instead of degrading their opponent
Sometimes opponents need to be called out on their shit. In any case, I become immediately uncomfortable with restricting pure political speech in this manner.
Only if there's a political campaign that represents the issues they care about in the first place. Oftentimes that's not the case.
And even then, there's no guarantee that the campaign would use that money specifically to promote the issues that they care about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy
> Where does that line get drawn?
In this case, at Google.
The "for more information" or "how to help" page it links to, however, does explicitly name politicians and praises or condemns their positions on the issue and urges you to vote accordingly.
Allowed under your rules?
Take this one in not allowing certain kinds of inappropriate content:
" Content that harasses, intimidates, or bullies an individual or group of individuals
Example: Content that singles out someone for abuse or harassment; content that suggests a tragic event did not happen, or that victims or their families are actors, or complicit in a cover-up of the event."
Do other networks have similar policies?
" Promotions that are likely to shock or scare
Examples: Promotions that suggest you may be in danger, be infected with a disease, or be the victim of a conspiracy"
" Promotions containing obscene or profane language
Examples: Swear or curse words, slurs relating to race or sexuality, variations and misspellings of profane language"
Very interesting company. They have data on 5 billion people that sits in an airport hanger sized building.
What prevents Google from shutting out legitimate campaigns that aren't racist or hateful, but doesn't align with how Google sees the future of the USA?
EDIT: Ok, you have to select a specific campaign to see the targets. Unfortunately I can't see where to go from the non-specific-campaign-filter video I select to the campaign it was on. Also there is campaign ambiguity since they are identified by date ranges...ideally a better presentation should be done.
A general FAQ can be found at [1]. Note how it doesn't include political ads that don't mention a federal candidate so, e.g. ads similar to the recent brexit ad disclosures would not even appear here if they happened domestically. Similarly, gubernatorial ads would also not appear. I can understand that what is and isn't a political ad when its about an issue and not a candidate is hard to determine (especially w/out FEC ID), but we have to assume the ads are at least viewed and categorized internally before deployed and it is at that point it would be reasonable to mark them.
0 - https://transparencyreport.google.com/political-ads/library/...
1 - https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/9052272