Google announces stricter rules for political ad targeting

Google is changing the way it handles political ads.

In a blog post Wednesday, the company said it will limit election ads' audience targeting to age, gender and location, while banning targeting by political affiliation (such as left-leaning, right-leaning and independent) and public voter records (which was, until now, allowed in the U.S.).

Google says this will align its political ads practices to how things are done in traditional media like TV, radio, and print.

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"Given recent concerns and debates about political advertising, and the importance of shared trust in the democratic process, we want to improve voters' confidence in the political ads they may see on our ad platforms," Scott Spencer, Google Ads VP of Product Management, wrote in the post.

The company says the changes will go live in the UK within a week, in the EU by the end of the year, and in the rest of the world starting on January 6, 2020.

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The blog post also clarifies Google's political ads policies, explaining that the company doesn't allow deepfakes in its ad, and that it's "against (its) policies for any advertiser to make a false claim." Google, however, notes that "no one can sensibly adjudicate every political claim, counterclaim and insinuation," which is why the company expects the number of political ads which it will remove to be "very limited."

Google's announcement follows Twitter's decision in September to ban all political ads on its platform. Facebook, which has been a target of criticism due to the way it handled the spread of disinformation during the 2016 general election, still allows politicians to lie in their ads.